


LA Is the Hell You Make It

by touchstoneaf



Series: Souls In Bondage [2]
Category: Angel: The Series (Comics), Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Adult Content, After The Fall comics canon rewrite, Anal Sex, Blood Drinking, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Hell-A is actually kind of a blast, I'd tag Illyria/Wesley but he's dead and she's not Fred so it's weird, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Maria Spider Harley, Ms. Clean, Multi, Past Rape/Non-con, Season 8 BtVS comics referenced, Teeth aka Bro'os, a whole gang of OC Spikettes, brief Spike/Other (non-con), dub-con in canon but Buffy wasn't there in that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2020-10-06 23:02:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 40
Words: 385,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20514941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/touchstoneaf/pseuds/touchstoneaf
Summary: Part 2 of"Souls In Bondage"seriesTeam Angel has gone through the looking glass.  But this time, they happened to do it a little differently.  See, the one thing the Senior Partners didn’t count on was Buffy.Normally, the Powers That Be can’t affect things in a hell dimension ruled by entities who suck at losing so bad they cheat their own lawyers.  But when you not only have a bunch of Champions… but also a bonafide PTB conduit stuck in your hellscape like a fly in the ointment, it causes serious problems for hellgod types… and really makes things interesting for a bunch of lost souls and demons trying to make a difference in Hell-A.Also, you know…  Who knew Hell could be such a nice vacation spot for a vampire and Slayer who just wanted a damn moment alone?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OffYourBird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OffYourBird/gifts).

> **Story Note:** This is a sequel to “The Ethnocentrism of Vampthropology”, and is Part 2 of a series. If you haven’t read Part 1 you might be able to keep up, but you’ll have missed some important stuff. Read on at your own risk. Also... for those of you who have made a stab at reading “After the Fall”… I’ve changed a lot of little details about Hell-A and its continuity. Mostly because I first wrote these based on the wiki and summaries, and fixed things later when I found out the things were actually available online. Some stretches are wildly deliberate. And some... Well. Some are because that’s what fic is for, yo.
> 
> **Formatting Note:** For anyone who’s brave enough to enter this saga in the middle (run away now and come back after reading Part One! Ahem. I mean, do you, I’m glad you’re here!) I do a weird thing. Or, at least, it’s weird nowadays. I use an old fanfic convention from long ago because I'm ancient, and we didn't used to have access to italics in the days when I used to fic. Can't break the habit now, I'm just too old and it looks weird for me without it. Character thoughts look like this in my stories: /Blah blah blah./  
Also, eventually there is telepathy in this. See above note about the good ol' days. The convention I therefore use for telepathy is: --Thought, thought.--
> 
> **Disclaimer:** All characters property of Joss Whedon, damn his brilliant, confusing soul. And Mutant Enemy. And apparently some people at, I guess, Fox, now? (Who can even keep track anymore. I’m still half-stuck in the WB/CW/UPN confusion.) All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners, yadda and blah. The OCs are MINE, ALL MINE! I am in no way associated with Joss, Mutant Enemy, UPN, Fox, or any other media franchise. I intend no infringement. I intend sexy shenanigans and JUSTICE FOR SPUFFY!
> 
> **Pairing(s):** Um, Spuffy. Always Spuffy. Acknowledges all canon pairings up to the end of S7 of BtVS and S5 of AtS and then takes a header right off into the land of canon-divergence, because that’s where I live. Know that I'm also very pro Cangel, and I hate Bangel with a fiery passion, though I try to be fair to Buffy's feelings about it and keep my personal issues to myself. If the anti-Bangel bleeds through... you've been warned.  
Please note; there is a very brief, non-con Spike/other (canonically dub-con, but Buffy wasn’t there in that story), and there are a few OCs who show up to spice things up for some canon folk as we progress.
> 
> **Rating:** Oh, this is so very NC-17. If it’s Spuffy and it’s not, I’m really not sure what you’re doing with your life. I mean… Alright; Mature is probably a better word, now we’re getting really into the thick of things, here. Probably even a bit kinky. Is that a rating? (Spuffy ain’t shy.)
> 
> **Dedication:** As always, this one's for OffYourBird. You know why.

**AN:** Alright; for everyone who is joining me here from Pt. 1: "The Ethnocentrism of Vampthropology", thank you from the bottom of my heart for continuing the journey with me! For anyone new to my schtick... Buckle up. I hope you enjoy.

Also, please note... Tho I tried hard, this fic is as yet without beta (because it's massive and finding someone willing to beta a beast like this and who is also into the post-AtS stuff is tough)... so if you notice any errors that are making your enjoyment jump the shark, feel free to let me know and I will fix away!

* * *

_"One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it: — it was the black kitten's fault entirely."  
_

* * *

**Month 1:**

  
Buffy had just pushed him down to keep his head on—that swing would’ve taken it off for sure—and stabbed one of those buggering spider-demons over his shoulder, when everything changed.

All the sudden the rain cut off like someone had turned off a tap… and so did the night. The skies went orange like some kind of nuclear sunset—what the sodding hell had that dragon _done_ up there, anyway?—and, abruptly, all the noise of battle vanished like it had never been.

Spike’s flesh promptly started to go giddy. Buzzing, like. Energized in an odd way, and almost-burning, but not. /What the bloody hell?/ 

Right buggered with it, he straightened. Shoved ringlets of damp, irritating hair out of his eyes to glare around him, expecting as he did for some new menace come to harass them. 

And saw devastation. 

LA had turned into some sort of flaming hellscape. The buildings looked right, but everything from the horizon on down was red-orange and burning from behind; broken, pitted. It was hot as holy hell—hotter even than this sodding state had a right to be—and yet oddly humid. Leftovers from the unseasonal rain, maybe?

Then he cast his eye to the skies. And saw a sun. 

/Oh, fuck!/ The reality of his situation struck Spike as abruptly as if he had been hit by an anvil, and he cowered automatically. Christ, was it daytime? Where the bloody fuck was his duster? /Christ; back at my sodding flat where it’s useful as shite, and why sodding hell am I not on fire?/

The odd, orange light danced over his bare arms, jittered in his blood. Burned, yes… like being on a buggering beach in August. If he were human, that was, and just what the fuck was going on?

The rest of the place was equally nonsensical. The battle had vanished along with the dark. All of the demon hordes that had been attacking them had gone pelting away under the rusty luminescence as if they were terrified of it—not that he blamed them in the slightest—to melt into the inexplicable background as if someone had dumped napalm on them and lit a match. He thought he saw the spider-demons they had been fighting scattering up the sides of some nearby buildings, but they vanished literally before his eyes as he watched. Which, well, good on them, and he had half a mind to do the same, but…

“What in the seven sodding hells?” he muttered; aloud this time. Realized he was thoughtlessly patting his clothes, that he still expected at any moment to burst into flames. “Did we fight all night? When did the sun come up?” The anxiety of it, of being out under what looked like daylight, was innate, and it made his newly-resurgent demon retreat as if it had never been out dancing. His game face vanished, and along with it went the thrill of battle. And yet… There was no prickle of inborn alarm, no warning in the back of his skull that said to hide, to flee, to…

“You’re not burning.” Buffy’s hand had lifted to tentatively to touch his arm; and the wonder in her eyes as they reflected the odd, rust-colored light, made it almost worse. Christ, it was real then. She saw it too. 

“Yeah. Noticed that, pet.” He let out a breath that felt far too bloody necessary. /I should be burning./ He simply could not reconcile it, that paradoxical absence of sun-alarm in his blood, no terrifying scent of flaming death in the ozone. There wasn’t even the built-in thrill here—though, no thrill for him anymore who had already gone that road—which meant he was at risk of turning to dust. Nothing boiling in him; not a sodding thing prickling at his neck to tell him that he had found his third death, unwanted now with Buffy here at his side once more.

It was fucking odd as hell, and it drove him to a quick self-inventory. Did one of Buffy while he was at it. She didn’t smell of blood; only of sweat and effort, so there was that. Could have done it quicker if his sodding vamp-equipment was in evidence, but any road he could have identified Buffy-blood if he was halfway to dust. She was right enough to be going on with.

What the hell was on with his demon, though? Had he tired the shiftless bugger, bringin’ it out for the first time in however bleeding long? It did take effort, now, to call the wanker up, where once it had been the opposite, and an effort to keep the demon down and his human guise in place when things got too exciting or dangerous or inspiring or that. Learning that skill was the first thing he had mastered as a wet fledge, so that he might be taken out aboveground to wander amidst the human snacks unnoticed. Still, in those early days the bounder had slipped out at every opportunity; at the scent of a woman walking by with blood pumping away, called forth by the thunder of a heartbeat in his ears, come bounding out for the rushing of blood close to. Just from the feel of Drusilla taking his arm and leaning close; Christ, anything. 

Wasn’t difficult, of course, by the time he’d come to Sunnyhell. Wasn’t a fledge anymore, for one, and hadn’t been for ages. Could keep himself under wraps; wasn’t even as obvious as his sodding grandsire when it came to that. But now, with the soul topside… Of late it had been a struggle to bring the demon _up, _rather than the other way about_. _A matter for conscious focus. Easy enough to dismiss the sod; and all too easy to simply sit about in his human face and watch the bloody world go by. Even when his passions had been aroused, even when he thought of Buffy and wanked hopelessly off downstairs on that sodding cot, or in his shitehole of a flat… no demon. Only when he’d fed had the bugger roused without conscious effort—and that because it was needful—but otherwise that side of himself had remained wholly submerged until called for. 

It felt different now, since the battle. Like he should be able to get the demon to come up without undue effort; or that the sod might even rise on his own when needful? He certainly felt as if that side of himself was there; close to. Right under the bloody surface, really… but he also felt as if right now the bastard just couldn’t be fucked to wake up.

It was different, and it was damned nettling. /Just got you back, you tosser. Wake _up!_ Don’t half care if you want a kip! That’s just too bloody bad, me lad, because I sodding need you right now!/ He needed the wildness, the ferocity in this fucking place, if he never had before. He felt empty without the demon he had been, as he stared into the terrifyingly bright sky. Naked, even. 

More so when something that looked like a flaming meteorite roared across the sky behind them, catching all their eyes. He jumped a bit in spite of himself, turned with Buffy to watch it come down hard, crash into a skyscraper with a resounding _boom_. The building exploded, the top sheared off. /Holy bloody hell./ There were flying things in the air, and they sure as shite weren’t condors. The air smelled of smoke, and burning things… but it also smelled _wrong_. No scents of California; nothing he associated with LA at all. No smog or brine or suntan lotion, no car exhaust or palm trees or distant brush. Hot pavement and human sweat, yes, but really, mostly alien odors, and demonic ones, all in a difficult-to-parse muddle. 

It was bleedin’ confusing, made him feel like he was standing outside himself a bit. And it bloody well made him want access to the fullness of his being; to the part of him that was right to cope with this sort of madness. 

He thoughtlessly prodded at his demon, rather like one might at a sore fang knocked loose in a brawl, but the bugger still wouldn’t stir. /Just when I thought I might have the trick of it, can’t get you to rouse even as much as you’ve done of late. Useless bastard./ Not even so much as the way he had drawn the prat up in what, throughout the last two years, had become standard circumstances. /You can’t even manufacture a bloody facsimile of bloodlust right now; in _this?_/ 

What the sodding shite was going on?

“It looks like a nuke went off.” Buffy was staring around her, clearly as confused as he was. Her eyes slid back to his, alarmed as hell. “What kind of game are those Senior Partners playing, here?”

Spike absently patted a few more bits of himself, mystified and thoroughly unnerved with it. “We both get knocked on the head, you reckon? Or are we dead and we just missed it?” He certainly didn’t feel at all right. Not in the head, not in himself. Odd. Just bloody odd.

Buffy frowned fitfully. “I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t look like the place I went to the last time _I_ died.”

“Yeah, well…” He swiveled his head around him, becoming more and more nervy with each detail he saw. Like the flying, dragon-like demons flocking toward them in the distance. /Oh, buggering hell./ “Bit worried, pet, that you might have hitched a ride on my trolley this time ‘round. Maybe on account of you were touching me? Because don’t know about you, but this looks more like hell than heaven, innit?” /Christ, I hope I didn’t drag you with me to hell./ Buffy didn’t deserve what he did. She deserved to go back. Floating and peace and bloody harps. /Shit, shit…/

Buffy shuddered a little as she took in her own eyeful, uncertainty coloring her lovely, smudged face and bold stance. “You think?”

Another possibility had just occurred to him. And since he didn’t recall having dusted in the fight, it all of a sudden seemed quite a bit more likely.

He suddenly badly wanted a fag. “That, or we’re in your bog-standard demon-dimension.” He cursed, scuffed a boot at the cracked, pitted, dry-as-a-bone concrete below their feet. “Somebody really botched this all to bloody hell, didn’t they?” Not that that would explain why he couldn’t seem to bring his own personal demon back out to play. It hadn’t been this difficult to shift the prat when the he had been almost completely submerged after his little trip to Africa; shocked into hiding, and he’d been lolling about underneath a haunted bloody schoolhouse like a tosser, muttering to dead things.

Not what was important now, though. Buffy was clearly in a state; standing at a loss, eyes closed. “Demon dimension?” she repeated, sounding a bit shaken. Not so as anyone who didn’t know her would hear it, but the note was there, just under her voice. “Like… the kind where you go in, spend a hundred years, and come out and it’s been five minutes, you think, or… one where you’re there in real time?” And her voice was a little too light, a little too high as she said it.

Which was when it hit him, all at once. They were supposed to do battle and all that noble shite, and then she was supposed to get back to her people in Scotland. Rally the troops against the soddin' Scourge, not be stuck here in some fucked-off version of LA. “Oh, bleedin' hell; I’m sorry, luv. I don’t know how it happened, but we’ll figure it out, get you back in time to make things right…”

“Those we fought were angered. We were fighting well; doing much greater damage against their armies than they had expected. So they punished you, and all you served.” It was Illyria’s voice, as flat and frank as ever as she dropped from more or less nowhere to land in front and to one side of them. She laid something down next to them; a long bundle that smelled very thoroughly of blood and death. It also had a bit of a familiar bouquet; like…

/Oh, fucking God, you didn’t, did you Illyria?/ 

He saw Buffy lean away, wincing, and yeah. It was what it looked like. Illyria had vanished to go fetch Wesley’s body. Why in the hell…

“The entirety of the city of the angels is here, now; in this realm which belongs to them.” The big blue bloody demigod sank to a crouch over her sodden little trophy and looked around warily. “This dimension smells of displacement; and of hunting, and of death.”

/Well, yeah, since you have a bit of the death right there under your bleedin’ nose./

Buffy looked away from the corpse, but her eyes were now troubled with an entirely other concern. Not that he blamed her. As the impact of the Smurf’s words struck him, Spike felt a hard slug of rage blossom in his chest, curl up into his throat. “Well, that’s just bloody cheating, innit?” he exclaimed. “That’s not playing the game by the bleedin’ rules!”

A quieting hand fell onto his forearm. “Spike, I’m pretty sure these people don’t care too much about the rules.” And she nodded up at the sky, where the winged dragon-looking beasties were circling a little too close for comfort. 

Though he had to scoff a little at her description of the Senior Partners as ‘people’, he let her tug him backward into the shade of the nearest building. Illyria picked up her pet cadaver and followed them with what looked like only vague interest as they located some sort of crevice between doorways to use to get something solid at their backs and hide themselves for a bit. At which point the Smurf laid her little prize alongside herself against the wall right the fuck next to Spike’s head, redolent of still-fairly-healthy blood. It made him wish to God she’d find someplace else to put the thing. For one, it was going to go off soon, and he wasn’t sure which would be worse; wanting to have a nibble at a former friend, or having to smell the bloke’s carcass slowly degrade. For the other… it was sodding unwelcome for Buffy to have to continue to look at the corpse of her dead ex-Watcher.

They both looked resolutely away from the sight, if for very different reasons; set to sussing out the terrain in an automatic sweep for dangers. The entire time, Spike found himself doing a repeated internal check. Prodding at his somnolent demon… but no dice. The bastard was fucking sleeping, was all. 

The parts of him he had come to identify as comprising his human side were on high alert, though, to make up for the useless prat; on the lookout for hazards which might threaten his survival. How could he depend on that bit of him, though? Had done for two years, sure, but he’d had at least a bit of help from his demon-side, even then. And now… jack shit. It was bizarre, frustrating, unnerving. The comfortable side of him, the one he’d worn for most of his hundred-plus years, and on whom he was most used to relying for intelligence regarding his surroundings, the side of himself that had been so abruptly and wildly and gloriously reawakened by Buffy’s divine grace just hours ago… That wanker seemed to have taken it upon himself to just completely skive off. Like it was gone dormant, almost. 

And yet, it wasn’t as if the bugger was in hiding, per se. No, the flavor of it was more, Spike had begun to realize, as if being here, in this place, had oddly relaxed the demonic bits of him, made them feel… replete, somehow. As if, back home in their own dimension he had always felt ready for war, ready to fight to survive. As if it had been made to be a weapon, and here… 

Here it was at rest. At peace. And it made not a whit of sense.

Spike found himself wondering how the place might be affecting Buffy. Hell, it was his fault she was here at all; mostly human and trapped in a demon dimension of unknown flavor and texture. She had a bit of demon in her, yeah, but how much of that bit of her might be keeping her going in a place like this? And conversely, how much of her might be run down, here, or…

But so far she seemed awake and alert enough; eyeing the exit, tense and wary, galvanized by the exigencies of their current predicament. /My fault you’re here, Buffy, but by Christ, I can’t bring myself to regret it. Selfish bastard that I am… Fuck; I should be wishing you far away, wishing you’d never come to me, but…/ All he could manage was awe, and a weight of gratitude like to bring him to his knees right here in the alley. 

She wanted him. He still couldn’t fathom it. Wanted _all_ of him, no less. By some bloody miracle, he had her back. Really, had her at all; for the first time, when he really put himself to the screws and admitted it plain. A revelation, that. And by coming, she had in turn given him back all of himself. Had handed him, of her free will, her own munificent, insane, incomparable trust, in every part of him. 

And by so doing, she had made him one, so that he could be, for the first time in his existence, truly whole in himself. /If I can ever get the rest of me to stop going on the bloody blink, that is./ Complete again, possibly even more so than he had been prior. For he was now at peace with William in a way he had never been before; not even in his nancy human existence. Had been forced to become so; been forced to inhabit the prat, finally and for lack of any other persona… and in so doing he had found, all-unrealized, that his wet, poncy self had grown, in the interim, into a man he might even, in time, come to be a titch proud of. A man someone like Buffy could even be proud of; a man his goddess had actually come back for, loved. All that for which he had so long striven and toiled in vain... He had once been sure he was equally undeserving as William; until he had had no other choice. Had hidden that very human part of himself from her as unworthy, less than, too puny to be her match in any way, and dwelt full-on in the demon he had considered to be closer to her equal. /And look how that panned out./

To think, then, that she had come back for _both_ parts of him? Even more astounding, that both his inadequate halves had, it seemed, somehow risen to the occasion and become, together over the years and via the crucible of his love for her, someone for whom she might sacrifice so much, give her heart, come to love. Christ; that she might even find them, each, separately, worthy was beyond crediting. 

Because that in turn meant that, possibly, put together into a whole… he might even be a match for the woman he worshiped.

It was, at least, a start. 

Beyond the borders of the alley, one of the meteorite things came down directly into the middle of the squawking flock of dragon-creatures. Sent the whole lot of them up in flames. It damn near made Spike jump again. Not that he hadn’t heard it first, and not that he hadn’t smelled it coming. He still had all of his vampiric senses intact, but… his reactions were startlingly human, at the worst possible bloody time. 

Fuck. This was so not a pleasant place to be; for friend _or_ foe.

/Well. Problem for another sodding moment. Best not to allude to my bit of internal confusion, till I can figure it first./ Squaring his shoulders to shake off the irritating buzzing of the odd sun on his hide, Spike shot a glance toward Buffy. She was still watching the much-altered city of her birth with, he thought, something that might have been very personal offense. Her quiet pain brought a frown to his face as he turned his eyes on the preoccupied Illyria. “Alright. I suppose what we need to do is bodge some kind of way out of here, eh? Any ideas?”

The predator’s gaze never ceased shifting out of the azure-tinged visage to cast around them. “We are all here on sufferance. Until we know how the gates are wrought, we will not escape this dimension.”

He had been afraid of that, and returned his attention to his love to gauge how she was taking the news. And was arrested, for a moment, from all scenes of chaos and mayhem, by the stunning, breathtaking picture she presented.

Awe flooded him as he looked on her. /That I get to stand here in the light with you. Watch you glow…/ Christ, it was an incredible thing to look on her in the daylight; even such an odd light as this. He remembered fighting her over the Gem of Amara—of course he bloody did, like it was sodding yesterday—all her limbs glowing in the lambent gold radiance, tawny and gleaming with a faint coat of sweat, eyes damn near as feral as his own. Limber as a jungle cat with her hair flying, eyes enraged at his temerity in exiting the night to come into her territory in the day… and yet, enjoying the contest with him when he’d stepped back, given her the moment to join him in the dance that had always lain between them. 

He’d only ever seen her since in half-light and in shadow. In dusk and coming dawn… and when she’d left and entered the liminal spaces where he could but hover at the edges of her broader existence like a dead thing was meant to do, and pray to be even a small part of her being. /Bloody hell, Buffy, I love you. And _look_ at you. I’m so bleeding bound to you. You’re my _All_./

“I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered, as if kicked into speech by his regard. “Dawn’s in the middle of so much.” 

The unspoken was easy to hear. ‘And I left her alone.’ 

/Oh, Christ, she’s regretting it. Regretting coming. And why shouldn’t she? How could you be anything like a trade for her life, for the Niblet, for…/ Not that he blamed her. He didn’t want her here anymore than she did. “We’ll… get you back soonest, Buffy,” he heard himself answer roughly. “And till then, Bit’s not really alone, innit? She has Harris, no doubt, right, or Red? Or both?” 

Buffy frowned at nothing in particular. “She’s a giant right now…”

That startled him enough to jerk him straight away from his lookout. “The Niblet’s a what?”

His stunned exclamation broke her attention enough to shoot him a half-amused look. “It’s a long story. I’m pretty sure it’s because she lost her virginity with this kid she likes who’s a thricewise. She won’t admit it, but…”

Spike groaned in spite of himself. “Buffy, you have to keep an eye on the Platelet. She’s a free-spirited little chit. What the bleeding hell is she doing getting herself sorted out by a thricewise, of all things?” He shuddered. “It’d be like shagging a big ball of snot, and you couldn’t even rip its head off for doin’ it to her afterward, ‘cause it doesn’t really have one. And it’d just grow back. Of all the bleedin’…”

“Believe me, Spike, I tried to talk her out of dating Kenny…”

_“Kenny?”_ he demanded incredulously.

“Tried to point her toward someone less dangerous. If she was determined to prove she was a rebel by dating a demon, there was a nice Ano-Movic kid over in the next dorm. Even _I_ thought he was cute. But no. It had to be the…”

“Big ball of snot?”

She threw him a tolerant look, looking almost as if she’d completely regained her equanimity, here in the face of hell. “Most days he looks like a normal kid.”

“Yeah, I bet he does.” Spike clenched a fist. “Remind me when we get out of here to strangle her, yeah? And rip off the mollusk’s feelers?” /We _will_ get the bloody fuck out of here. No fear! And then… Whatever you... If you…/

Buffy’s expression turned amused and, he thought, almost affectionate, and her free hand dropped to brush his lightly; just a faint hint of a caress with her knuckles. “I think she’ll like having you back in her life,” she murmured quietly. “You know, once she gets over hating you for abusing her boyfriend.” She looked out over the strangely-altered landscape, thus missing his entirely awed, no doubt utterly nancy expression. “Though, I’m not sure if he counts anymore, since he’s back at Berkeley, and I had to take her out of school, _because she doesn’t fit in the buildings.” _ The irritation visibly flooded her, the outrage, and she swung on Spike, a rant clearly building. “I just _can’t_ with her,” she hissed, low but adorably intense. “Do you know how much I would _kill_ to go back to college? And she didn’t even make it out of summer session! She was there for like a month, and boom! Giant.” 

Spike watched her in amazement, belatedly aware of two things. One, Buffy hadn’t been thrown in the slightest, somehow, by this side-jaunt into an apparent hellscape, from her original stated goal; which was to drag him back into her life, by his hair if necessary (as if any such drastic measures would be needed). For the second… The Bit still drove big sis to distraction.

Buffy rubbed a bit between her eyes; a common reaction to things Niblet, in so doing smearing some unmentionables across her face. “Xander thinks it might actually be some kind of subconscious thing, to get my attention, like the thing with locking us all in the house? A literal visible way to be big enough to catch my eye; but I don’t think everything she does is all about me anymore. Though… maybe this is… something.” She sighed heavily, sounding abruptly weary. Maybe even a hair bitter. “One time she said she thought I hated her, or at least liked the Slayers better because I could relate to them more or something. ‘They’re more your sisters than I ever was, blah blah blah’… Like, _seriously?_ As if she could drive me this nuts if she _wasn’t_ my sister! Though I swear sometimes she’s more like my kid than my sister, the way she acts…”

Despite their situation and the terrain, the generally dangerous atmosphere, Spike was, truth be told, finding it very difficult not to chuckle; in relief and in recognition. Buffy’s all-out exasperation with the Niblet was one of the constants in the universe. Moreover it warmed his soul to know that the youngest Summers chit had not been beaten down by time and tide. 

He seemed to have been caught out despite his endeavors, though, for Buffy shot him a harsh glare. “Don’t laugh at me, dammit!” she hissed. “I just got her away from all this crap; and now she’s back in my lap again and I have to keep her safe; in the middle of a damn _war_, when she could’ve been so much _safer_ over here in college! And she’s so stupidly _visible_ to our enemies now that I can’t hide _either_ of us!”

Spike held up both free and mace-hand in a gesture of surrender. “No offense intended, pet.” Broke his gaze away, eyes and ears still alert for dangers around them, while he set his mind to puzzling it out. After all, she seemed to be asking for his input… which was a wonder. But then, if Buffy wanted to acknowledge that he’d gotten to know a side of Dawn she hadn’t… The thought warmed him. “I think you and the Bit are always gonna have a contentious relationship, Buffy. Probably comes of her bein’ made from you.”

Her eyes flashed to his, full of a new, desperate hope. “Maybe you can talk to her. You always had some kind of special, weird bond with her that defied description.”

It made him scoff, since he rather thought that bit of snuggly, bosom-buddy interaction between him and the youngest Summers had died when he’d assaulted her sister. Certainly it wouldn’t extend to the subject of her first sexual encounter; not when it came to talking to _him_, of all people. 

Especially considering… “Yeah, well…” He glared around them at the hideous mess that they’d made of LA. “First we have to get out of here.” Time to suss out this new madness. Learn the rules so they could find the exits. He shot a glance over at Illyria, who was still hanging on to her corpse of a teddy bear and casing their immediate vicinity like a hawk. “You sure it’s not just us here?”

As if in answer to his question, the sounds began; a faint chorus of screaming, the off-beat patter of harried running that was fleeing feet, echoing all around him. “While circling to return to your position, I witnessed several noncombatants attempting to hide from sub-level demons inside buildings and behind vehicles.”

/Bleeding hell./ That didn’t sound good, if she’d spotted enough pulsers around a dimension like this to qualify them as ‘several’. And from the sound of it, most of them were already starting to wake up to the gravity of their situation. He glanced over at Buffy, wondering if she had yet heard the growing susurrus of misery. Once she had, this would be likely to become a crusade; one they no doubt would be hard-pressed to afford in their current disoriented state. “See any of our people?”

Frightening, ultramarine eyes met his briefly. “No. We have been scattered. But it would not be surprising if there were only four of us remaining. Charles Gunn was down when the change occurred. He had only seconds of breath left in his body.”

/Well, bugger me./ “I suppose we can try to find Peaches, then.”

“You could search the entire city and fail, but meet many demons who hungered for your demise in the interim.” The crazed pupils darted around once more. “It might be best to seek shelter.”

“I’m thinking a defensible position,” Buffy agreed. She looked pained at the idea of leaving her old honey-boo alone to fend for herself in this wasteland, but she clearly thought the Smurf here was talking sense. “Somewhere up high.” She turned a little, as if trying to orient herself. “Anyone see Mulholland from here?”

Spike shot her an interested look. “You wanna head for the hills?”

She threw him a sweet smile. “I’d like the advantage. And besides. There’s better shopping on the way toward Beverly Hills. Don’t even get me started on the Valley.” She shook her head as she eyed the spreading nomansland that was their current locale. “Downtown is such a hellhole.”

***  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(quote by Lewis Carrol)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a shorter chapter, some more scene-setting, but it sets up an integral, ongoing issue for our peeps throughout the rest of "hell". Also... sets up an interesting situation for the following chapter. Bear with me, *g*

It was about ten miles from their position down by the Hyperion to get the higher elevations—as high as anything got in LA anyway, till you got to the West Hills—if you could even count Beverly “Hills” as elevated. They topped out at couple hundred feet. But he would have to agree, it would be an advantage to be out of the Downtown basin; get some visibility.

The only problem was water. As in, the lack of it, anywhere. They had just been in the hell of a battle before coming here, and here was as hot as… well, hell. Buffy was tough as anyone Spike had ever met in his long century-plus, but she was still largely human, and she’d need to wet her whistle at some point, or she’d start to dehydrate.

He could already smell the signs. In just the last hour she was sweating less, and said sweat was becoming thicker, saltier. She was making fewer pit-stops, and not just because she was uncomfortable about them. Her embarrassment over that sort of thing had swiftly vanished as the hours had passed, since their first encounter with a load of god-alone-knew-what-sort-of-demon defending their squatters’ rights had made it pretty damned clear that slipping into any of the buildings to use the loos was far too dangerous a proposition. Sans any other likely options, he’d guarded the heads of the alleys for her while she overcame a lifetime’s inculcation to do the necessary… but dehydration was taking its toll there, too. Not to mention that her blood had long since ceased oozing from that cut on her head. 

That, too, had smelled terribly thick by the end. The kind of blood you thought twice about taking because the pulser would be like drinking a milkshake, not an easy pull at the fountain. Unless you liked that sort of thing. He knew a few who did; who liked the concentrated hemoglobin. But he’d always found it too strong. Full of body byproducts and waste as the person started to shut down, and who wanted all that in their systems? And yeah; his brain still thought like a predator, even if he used the ability, now, to diagnose rather than to suss out who to eat. He was a goddamned vampire. So stake him. 

She was currently squinting into the unending, dull-orange brightness next to him, looking a bit like she had a headache. Not that he blamed her. Christ, the sun here was odd as hell. Rusty. You could look right at it, like. It also had some sort of tangerine-stained moon riding directly next to it as if they’d been hitched together; a couple of teamed ponies. Bleeding heater, and he’d suggest they travel by the sewers just to get out from under the fucking glare, but god only knew what was lurking down there. Illyria had already downed five more giant spiders for them up here topside, Spike some dirty great lizard-thing, and Buffy something that might be classified as a horned demon, though it had had crab-claws as well. These wee skirmishes were, by the way, the only time his sodding demon had seen fit to rouse and be any kind of help. Slippery bastard would pop right back up the instant there was a fight to be had—and in full kit as well, none of that halfway nonsense of before—but he’d sink right the fuck back down and go back to his siesta the instant they seemed to be in the bloody clear. 

The trick seemed to be to keep hold of the bugger, and Spike, for the unlife of him, couldn’t manage to get the knack of it as yet.

Rotten bloody timing, that.

Any road, with the surface teeming like this, the normal highways had to be worse, right? Unless everyone was all up here instead, but no way to prove that without risking lives. Which meant the sewers were right out. 

Buffy couldn’t go on like this forever, though, skirmishes or no. “Hey, Slayer. How you holding up?”

She answered him without looking back, eyes still on the odd sky. “I’m fine.” But her mouth was open and the words came out dry and sandpapery. And her eyes, previously darting sharply about the chaos seeking dangers, were moving slower now, as if she had the hell of a migraine shaping up.

Far worse, though the sounds of suffering had grown around them in a slowly-rising symphony, he was disturbed to note she barely seemed to notice it. 

That was totally unlike his goddess.

Bugger it. “We’ve got to get you some water, pet.”

That got her attention. She jerked her head around to glare tensely at him, and for a mo’ he thought she was going to pretend she was just as dandy as ever… But then she more or less relaxed into the realization that she didn’t have to pretend with him. “Yeah. Problem is, who knows if there even _is_ water in this dimension. It’s not like it’s meant for humans.” It was uttered flatly, and without the bleak despair that would accompany most human beings facing possible painful demise. But then she was a tough nut, his Slayer. 

That, and fear of death wasn’t really in her wheelhouse anymore, after all she’d seen and done. Died and come back already, hadn’t she? What did she have to be afraid of, facing that? 

It was just, the process this time seemed a bit painful and ignominious; and hell if he’d let it happen to the woman he loved. “Believe it or not, demons drink; some of ‘em. Let’s have a look-see.” He called ahead to Illyria, who was prowling around about fifteen feet ahead playing vanguard, still cradling that fucking body. “Oi. Illyria. You smell any water lately?” /Over the growing stench of sun-warmed corpse?/

Fred Sonja circled smoothly back like she meant to do it, tilted her head to eye Buffy with something like vague interest. “This one is slowly dying,” she pointed out flatly.

“Thanks for the update,” Buffy answered grimly, at the same time as Spike said, “Well, yeah. Kinda the point of me askin’.”

Those bizarre ultramarine eyes rose up to meet his in Fred’s stolen face. “You wish to save her.”

Spike faced her head on. Hell with it. Let her have her Old One temper tantrum. “I’ve watched her die once. Not plannin’ on doin’ it again.” 

Buffy’s hand twitched against his own. It was too hot, too limp, as it acknowledged his flat statement. 

The Blue Meanie tilted her head to study him like a hawk would a tasty mouselet. “You are _my_ pet. Not hers.”

He sighed heavily. He could really use another fag, but he didn’t want to draw attention to their position by the smell or the smoke trail. “Illyria, let’s just say that if she dies, I’ll die, and leave it at that? Maybe put it at that she’s _my_ pet or summat, and see if we can find her some water?”

The crazy hell-bint eyed him for a moment longer, perfectly still… and then her eyes flickered down to the cadaver in her arms. “I understand.” And she moved off again, her attitude one of a huntress rather than a watchful border-keeper. 

Sodding fuck, he was amazed that the smell of her bitty toy there wasn’t bringing every other demon in the vicinity in for a look-see. Though, he supposed there was probably plenty of other fish in this sea. Not to mention that maybe the vast, imposing aura the Old One cast might be helping to warn everyone off. He’d gotten so bloody used to it that he scarcely noticed anymore, but it was like a beacon, wasn’t it, bleating a warning to all nearby demons to stay the fuck away.

Buffy shook her head painfully as their companion departed, frowning. “She’s pleasant.”

What the hell. There was smoke all over this place, and the whole goddamned dimension stank. Who would know his smoke was any different? “She’s got a ways to go in the people-person department.” He lit up blissfully. Thank Christ he’d kept his Zippo and at least a few smokes in his back pocket when he’d left his duster behind, though damn-all if he wished he had that now as well.

His love turned a gimlet glare at him as he puffed out the first lungful of used nicotine. “What was the thing with her saying you’re her ‘pet’?”

/Oh, hell./ “Long story, that. Best leave it to another time.”

Despite her clear exhaustion, the Slayer favored him with a suspicious, narrow-eyed gaze. “You didn’t..." The gaze cleared out, consciously, he thought, and the heartbeat he knew so well began to race; even to flub a bit. "Did you sleep with her? I mean, not that I... Not that you...”

She never had to finish restructuring her question from 'possessive Slayer' to 'civilized human'. Spike was too busy choking on the thought; so hard he caught his smoke wrong and damn near dropped his fag. “Christ no. Tryin’ to sort that one out would probably kill me.” With a snort of dark amusement he threw his half-smoked end on the cracked pavement and stubbed it out with his toe. “No, Buffy, she just used me to train with; to get used to her new body. Her ‘shell’, as she calls it. I was her favorite toy because I was tough enough to take her on—or at least survive what she dished out—so now she thinks she bloody well owns me.” And he wasn't at all going to grin at the clear bristling his girl had been doing just then. Not a bit of it. Would just put her back up, when she was trying so sodding hard to be a reasonable adult about their time apart.

He definitely appreciated her wanting to treat him as a partner rather than a bleeding lapdog, the way he had to admit now Dru had done. Still. Did a man proud to know a woman like Buffy wanted to keep him all to herself, like.

"Oh.” The Slayer was, he noticed now with growing concern, frowning after the sapphire-toned demon-god, expression gone a bit dark. “Did she hurt you?”

The grin managed to escape then, in spite of his best efforts. The proprietary air had faded to something... a bit protective, which was a nice, if unnecessary, sop. He well recognized the expression on Buffy's face. He'd seen it often enough, after all. She had on her ‘maybe I should kill the bitch anyway’ look about her. Just he hadn't seen it before on his behalf. On Dawn's, yeah, when it came to that Glory cunt, or when...

/You saw it with The First, after she came for you. Cut you loose. Set you to rights, saw the damage./

It sobered him up right quick. Because that look? It said he was _hers._ And what Buffy did when someone hurt the ones she loved... It was terrifying. And right now...  
  
/Christ./ “Not so’s I didn’t heal," he hurriedly assured her. "You know me. I’ve survived a hell of a lot of ass-kickings. From a hell-god; and from you, even. If I can live through those, I can take a few light slams from a top-flight demon trapped in a little bird’s body, yeah?”

He had apparently derailed her swift sidetrack into vengeance. Her heart was going pit-a-pat again; but in some oddly strained way, and she was looking down at her feet now. “There’s a lot from me you shouldn’t have had to survive,” she told him quietly.

/Oh bloody hell./ No way to win, was there? Fuck.   
  
He got a couple fingers under her chin, lifted it up. “Just stop that, alright? I thought we were starting fresh?” 

She nodded acknowledgment, but he was pretty sure from her expression that this wouldn’t be the last he’d see of Buffy guilt over their past, and who knew he’d ever be in the position of forgiving _her? _The very thought gave him the willies, considering all the sins could be laid at his own door. 

Best to move on. “Now. Back to getting you something to drink…”

Easier said than done, though, it appeared. They went on dodging from doorway to doorway, alley to alley under the hot alter-dimensional sun without shade or relief, not a demon bar or water fountain in sight, and Buffy was moving slower and slower as the miles dragged on. Heat beat up from the already-flaking concrete, sapped any remaining sweat from her body into the shimmering air, pounded down on her defenseless head. Spike couldn't even cool her with his flesh, as he was now the same sodding temperature as the day all round. Hell; she was even stumbling a bit now and then, and Christ, Spike was starting to seriously worry about her. No fun enjoying being under the sunlight for his first real day in a hundred-odd years when the love of his eternity was slowly expiring right next to him. /Please, you’ve got to hang on, Buffy, till we can figure this. I can’t bloody well lose you now! Not again. Not like this…/ 

The helplessness of it was like nothing he had ever felt. The irregular percussion of meteor strikes began to grate, the distant roaring of unnamed demons jarred even worse on over-extended senses…

The scream that pierced the endless day was the capper. Buffy reeled against him, clearly at the edge of her capacity. He gritted his teeth and swung around to face this new threat, Illyria beside them in an instant to stare out from the scant shadows of the building into the streets. And saw a nightmare.

Some hapless, sunburnt pulser in a white t-shirt—it had an Ocean Pacific logo on it—and blue swim trunks was making a mad dash across the intersection, on a diagonal from somewhere behind them toward god alone knew where, flip-flops clacking madly under his feet. He was screaming his fool head off, lobster-red with exertion and heat. And behind him, moving in great leaps, was some kind of bloody great four-legged hunting-type demon; a Verulga, Spike thought, or some other sort of brainless thing slavering along with nothing but a meal on its mind. 

Despite likely heat prostration Buffy reached onto her back, feeling around automatically for a crossbow that wasn’t there. Spike caught her overwarm hand, held it. Even if they had one, they didn’t dare call attention to themselves. Not here. Not when not a one of them was at the top of their game.

Besides. The poor sod was a goner. The demon was already on him.

The screams cut off abruptly as the vast, slavering mouth closed right over the pulser’s head… and approximately half of his torso. The stained white t-shirt vanished, and blood squirted out from rows of serrated teeth as they scissored around the top of the blue shorts.

Buffy was struggling in his arms—ineffectually since she was at maybe half-strength—her fist tight around the axe where she had, previously, barely been holding it up any longer. “Let me go, Spike…”

He opened his mouth to try to talk some sense into her, but someone else got there first. “The man is dead, demon-slayer. We must keep moving.”

Illyria’s calm appraisal seemed to shock Buffy out of her innate sense of duty. “What do _you_ care?” she demanded. “You’re a demon, too!”

Illyria smiled; a slightly, inward expression, and tilted her indigo head. “As is the one to whom you cling.” Her arms twitched upward, tugging Wesley’s corpse a little closer to her breast. “But like him, I have much that is human in me holding me back, and binding me to human concerns. Now, come. I think I smell your water.”

That riveted Buffy’s attention, dragged it straight away from the little luncheon going on over there in the middle of the street. It reft Spike’s attention as well. /Thank sodding God!/ 

Another few minutes’ walk past Crenshaw brought them to a doorway of what looked like a little hole-in-the-wall convenience store. Apparently some enterprising demons had already taken it over and set up shop, to judge by the clear change in window displays and signage. The slapdash new shingle hung over the top of the old neon was scrawled in some demon lingo he didn’t read, and he glanced at Illyria to see if she could afford them a translation.

“It indicates that there is refreshment within.”

“Oh. Well. Lovely. How the hell are we supposed to get her some water without arousing suspicion, you think?”

Illyria looked like she’d lost interest, really. “I have found it for you. I will keep watch.”

Buffy, her skin shiny, red, and dry now, no longer sheened with sweat, looked beat all to hell, but she straightened determinedly. “How many could there be in there?” And she tightened her fists around her loosely-held axe.

It trembled in her shaky grasp. 

Oh, hell no. 

Casting about, Spike was seized with an idea. She wasn’t going to like it, but… “Hold on, there, Slayer.” Bending down, he grabbed a hank of something looked like old twine off the littered ground… /Well, fuck./ It was former entrails, dried in the sun. No good. Not bendy enough. “Oi. Illyria. Mind lending us a bit of your kit, for just a mo’?”

Illyria lifted a brow. “What do you mean?”

“Need a bit of leather.” At her continued level look, “You know, some string or summat.”

Buffy was starting to look suspicious now. “Spike, why do you want string?”

***  
  
  
  
What, oh what diabolical plan does our Spikey have up his sleeve with that string? Hmmm?  
I'll let y'all fester on that one.   
I'm sorry this was a short chapter; it was just the way things broke up. But if it helps any, I promise much smutty goodness next update. Which should at least indicate that the quest for drinkables goes apace, lol.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. So. I'm impatient, lol.
> 
> Warnings ahead. About halfway thru... Smut ahoy. And some discussions of the claim-y sort.
> 
> Also, as this is in SpikePOV, there will be some lingo in the smut that will not be, ah, the same lingo I will use in later BuffyPOV smut. In case people are turned off by certain smut words, please don't think that they are my standard for every smutty moment. I simply consider Spike to be significantly more, ah... worldly than Buffy, and a bit more coarse about some things, so his voice is more in that vein in those matters (when he's not waxing poetic, or when he's taken by surprise, lol). When later smut occurs in BuffyPOV, the lingo will change dramatically, and accordingly.

“I still think this is a bad idea, and we should just kill them.”

“Shh. You’re going to bollix up the illusion.”

“Right. That I’m your slave-girl…”

Spike winced as they made to duck into the darkened doorway of the repossessed convenience store. “It’s a demon dimension, luv. My guess is not many humans go runnin’ ‘round free, like, ‘less they’re under some demon’s protection. So if we pretend you belong to me, and I’m seeing to your care and feeding…”

“Yeah. I heard the whole story outside. You better not let this go to your head once we’re done with this little charade, Spike, or I swear to God…”

/Christ./ Buffy stood at his side, gorgeous eyes flashing; a leather string tied loosely about her neck and about half-dead but still ready to tear his head off and shove it up his bung. Made him bounce a bit on his heels and grin a little smugly. “I promise I’ll let you take it out of my hide later, yeah?”

The door opened into a little bit of a glassed-in corridor between window-displays before emptying out into the main shop. As they moved through that, something occurred to Spike, and he frowned. “Hell. Wonder what they use for dosh around here.”

“Oh God,” Buffy whispered back, “do you think it’s kittens?” And her nose wrinkled up adorably in utter distaste.

Christ, he could eat her. “I doubt it, luv. I think they’ve got right tastier things to sup around here even than little fluffykins. Now.” He rattled the makeshift leash a little, though he had the good sense not to tug on it. “I know it’s not in your nature, Slayer, but do us a favor and pretend to be the type who follows orders for just a few minutes, yeah? Not for me, you understand, but for the water?”

She threw him a falsely innocent look, complete with downcast eyes and fluttering lashes. “Whatever do you mean, my lord and master?”

He groaned. “I’m gonna pay for this later on, is it?”

She smiled on him like the sun… but with a catch. “Depends on if you get me water.”

He was so going to pay for this.

Was it bad that he was kind of looking forward to it?

They rounded the corner from the little entry corridor, saw what they were faced with. Three demons; two behind the counter and one puttering around in the store. The two behind the counter seemed your standard shopkeep types; one a hunched-over, hairy Graenek demon minding the till, and some other sort he didn’t know fussing with the smokes. Tall, spindly type with long arms and not much to him, looked like a good stiff breeze would knock him down. Though, never a good idea to judge based on outward appearance. 

The one on their side of the counter was a meathead; a dumb-as-a-jug Frugosh demon. Probably wouldn’t fight because it would take it ten minutes to figure out what was going on. It was standing back by a bunch of fridges glowing green with whatever stopgap they’d found to power ‘em, perusing the offerings in there. The lights from the interiors flickered viridian off of his slimy hide, which was, incidentally, shiny enough to reflect the logos of the inside contents. 

A Frugosh’s main defense was it was fucking slippery. That was all about it. You couldn’t hold on to the damned things if you tried. Even punches slid right off without doing the slightest bit of damage. They were about as offensive as a greased post. 

Spike scanned the fridges quickly around the slimy bastard’s hide, and noted nothing that looked like water. /Hell./ Tilted his head just slightly toward Buffy. They moved on purposefully toward the counter, with the Slayer pacing along a step or so behind him and probably attempting to look demure. It helped that she was exhausted, else she'd fool no one.  
  
At best right now they were lucky heatstroke was making her tired. Any other time she might be shooting everyone glares just for believing the mockery they were putting on. /Just stand it for a few minutes, Buffy. Just five minutes, yeah?/ “Oi," Spike called, and prayed he sounded filled with wary bonhomie. "How’s this fine day in hell takin’ you, mates?” Leaning against the glass, he pulled out a fag and lit it, striking his best ‘big bad’ pose. Set one hand on the surface while maintaining the other at his side; the one with Buffy’s ‘leash’ wrapped loosely around his wrist.   
  
Buffy, hovering behind him, was doing her best to look ‘beat and anxious’, though she mostly just looked keyed up and thirsty with a side of deadly… because even half-offed from dehydration she really could still manage to tear most of these tossers in half, no doubt.

She really did make a man feel like a man. He’d ravish her within an inch of her life if she wasn’t dying of thirst and they weren’t in a precarious spot. And, well… 

Lot of reasons it was best to save the thought for later. 

The Graenek lifted its head high as it would go to eye Spike dubiously, spat on the floor. “Vampire.”

“Yeah, what’s it to you?” He pulled in a drag and narrowed his eyes, glanced over at the skinny one. “You also got a problem, mate? I’m bringin’ you business, same as the Frugosh over there.”

Frugosh didn’t even look up. That’s how behind the times those things were.

The skinny demon just glanced over at him and then turned back to its cigarette-organizing, clearly ready to ignore the entire interaction. Excellent.

“What’s with the human?” Graenek lifted itself a little to peep over the counter.   
  
Spike followed his gaze, and noted with something between amusement and concern that Buffy had since stationed herself a few feet behind his heels, and was now leaning somewhat theatrically against a display counter empty of all but a few remnants of past sundries. She appeared to be attempting to look 'cowed'. It was really rather adorable. Mostly she looked thoroughly bored and, he thought, tense under the edges, but he'd settle for that before 'ready to do everyone in out of desperation'. Especially since, beneath the boredom was a clear, shaky exhaustion that was in no way feigned.   
  
“Don’t your kind just… you know?” The Graenak waved its short, stubby, hairy digits around vaguely. “Eat ‘em and drop ‘em?”

Spike grinned around his smoke and pulled it away to grin over at his ‘trophy’. “Like how this one tastes. Gonna keep her around a while.” He shrugged in an offhanded way, as if he didn’t care really, one way or the other. Inside, of course, he was thrumming with impatience at the necessity for all this palaver. “Why I’m here, actually. Gotta feed her up. Blood gets too thick if you don’t water ‘em, thought I smelled some of that in here. Was hoping to make a purchase from you fine gentlemen.”

Suspicion flooded the Graenak’s gray visage. “She doesn’t look like she’s been bit in a while.”

Spike had worried about that, actually, and, wincing internally, gave an exceedingly minuscule tug on the leash. Buffy moved up to stand beside him; nobly refraining, as she did so, from doing anything more than standing, really hard, on his instep. “Yeah, well…” Holding his fag between his fingers so it didn’t burn her, he fingered the old claim on her neck that his poofter grandsire had put there over the top of old Batface’s older marks. The nearly invisible damage left by the poncy git with the perfect mane was there as well; all layered atop each other, but as distinguishable, to him, as if they were outlined in varying colors, in infrared. “Like I said. I _like_ this one. I’ve bitten her most recently in…” He clicked his tongue, showed a meaningful leer. “Other places.”

To his stunned amazement, instead of twisting in disgust at his broad innuendo, Buffy actually blushed in an incredibly fetching manner. It made his cock twitch distractingly. 

Across the counter, the skinny demon turned around to stare at him in shock. “You have sex with humans?”

Spike glared back in pugnacious challenge. “What of it?”

The thing was clearly disgusted. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to play with your food? Or your sire or whatever the hell it is you people have?”

Spike grinned easily, hoping he looked a bit more confident than he was feeling at the current moment. “You know us. We like to blur the lines.”

Skinny looked utterly horrified. “You vampires give real demons a bad name.” Turning away in a huff, it slipped through the counter toward the back of the store and vanished through a side door.

“Touchy bastard, that one,” Spike commented, fingers still lightly stroking Buffy’s neck below the leather thong in silent apology for the stupidity of this entire thing. “So,” he asked the Graenek; about that water?”

The Graenek bent over, lifted a case of shrink-wrapped water bottles onto the counter. “Whaddya have to trade, vampire?” It made a twisted face. “Besides your human. I don’t take sloppy seconds from a half-demon wannabe.”

/Oh, sod it; here we go./ “What’ll you take?”

“You got any Sulcranian ploi-dust? A Molcan crystal? A carton of Camel lights? Almost out of those…”

He had to say no to each of those, feeling increasingly worried as Buffy eyed the water with a terrible, pained lust. The truth was he had nothing to trade but blows. Could they grab it and get out clean? His fingers closed tighter around her axe in preparation, aware she’d see, or at least feel, the change in tension in his body. “How about we just…”

“Hey, did someone say somethin’ to me?” the Frugosh broke in slowly, turning from the freezers.

Bloody hell, these things were nits. “No, mate. Go back to pickin’ a drink.” Idjit.

But the distraction helped. Best time anyway; the Graenek’s head had turned toward his other customer, the skinny guy was gone. Grabbing the case of water one-handed, Spike turned with Buffy and made a break for the door. 

“Hey! You have to pay for that!” 

As they hit the edge of the glassed-in corridor and made the turn toward the exit, the Graenek, hunched-over, hairy, and slow-moving, leaped to the top of his counter, flared his arms out, and humped up. And turned into a swift, pissed-off gorilla of demon rage. 

And extruded eight-inch, curved and deadly claws. Like a handful of fucking sickles.

Finally, as if smelling a fight had given the fucker due cause to wake up from his bloody nap, Spike’s demon decided to take this moment to rouse sleepily to consciousness. As he fumbled to balance the water and the axe he found himself abruptly in full game face—Christ, he hadn’t even felt the thing come on!—and had to hold himself back from the utterly unexpected urge to turn round, roaring, and dive back into the fight with ferocious, unbridled glee. To tear throats, rip the fucking sod limb-from-limb for daring to threaten his mate, to…

Oh, bloody Christ, now was so not the bleeding moment. 

They piled out of the doorway, Buffy panting, Spike turning with her to get room to wield the damn weapon, one arm still wrapped around the case of water-bottles. The Graenek came pounding down the corridor behind them, roaring in his turn…

And then Illyria was in front of them, looking merely interested as it came on. She shifted her pet corpse over one shoulder. Tilted her head. Held out one hand… and caught the Graenek it as it ran head-on into her fist.

It exploded into blue-edged fragments. Hit the ground all sodding cored out, like a hairy, glowing apple. Like things were wont to do when they ran afoul of the Old Ones; and hell, it looked like this dimension was tuning Illyria up a bit as well in some way.   
  
So much for not making a sodding scene.

At the far end of the store, the Frugosh blinked at the brouhaha, clearly still trying to figure out what had just happened. “Where’d he go?” he asked dumbly.

“Sorry, mate,” Spike told the dripping remains of the Graenak, and bent to rip open the case. Still fangs out and breathing hard and unnecessarily, he plucked out a bottle for Buffy and handed it gruffly over, senses on overdrive. Fuck, he wanted a fight. His had been stolen from him. Illyria had taken his kill, and…

Buffy took the bottle from him. As their hands touched, he felt hers tremble slightly with the heat, with dehydration... In that contact, Spike's inner demon vanished as if it had never been awoken; dropped away to leave him shaken and open-mouthed. /Fuck./

Bending blindly, he hefted the rest of the shifting bottles and tilted his head toward the exit. No doubt they should leg it; a fact his oh-so-lazy demon-side had apparently already noted. Crisis over, the git had already sunken back to beddy-bye and taken his game face with him. /Truly, just what the everfucking hell?/ “Guess Skinny’s inherited the store, yeah?”

Buffy ignored him to crank open the bottle with shaking hands, single-minded in her intensity. 

“Slow sips at first, luv, or you’ll be sick.” He remembered reading that in something. Christ knew it had never happened to him, though he'd probably come bloody close a few times at Eton, what with fagging and all.   
  
She nodded sharp awareness of the proscription, every line of her somehow simultaneously amused, wearied, relieved, irritated, frantic, and grimly controlled. It was a wonder she didn’t punch him. No doubt she felt it a waste of energy to tell him she already knew how to take care of her human body and to shut his idiot gob.

They made tracks away from the store and got around a corner a few blocks away while Buffy worked slowly through her first bottle. She was already looking better, smelling less like she was coagulating under the endlessly hot sun. Speaking of which, why did it feel like it was always two in the afternoon here?

“You wanna stop here for a bit?” Spike asked, glancing around them. “Dunno how long we’ve been traveling, but I’d say we’ve made five miles. Think it’s another five and a bit to Beverly Hills. That’ll give us two, three hundred feet in elevation to start with.”

“I will patrol,” Illyria told them, and, hefting Wes’ remains once more, promptly vanished around a corner. 

Buffy lifted her head from her second water bottle to watch the Old One do her thing, looking bemused. “She’s a trip, isn’t she?”

“Oh, yeah,” Spike agreed darkly, “the Smurf’s a riot.” Right handy at a time like this, too, but he’d give her up in a nonexistent heartbeat if it meant they might have Fred back. /For one thing, that might mean travel about without a ripening bloody corpse./ Though no doubt that would also mean that bitty chit would be at the mercy of this place right now, which didn’t bear thinking. 

Granted, according to Angel’s lot, Fred had survived five years alone in another hell dimension called Pylea, so she might do alright at that. Chit had always been tougher than she looked. 

“She seems… pretty attached to… Wesley.” Buffy’s voice caught a little, there at the end.

“Yeah, well.” He could hear his own voice tighten. “Wes, ah… took care of her. After. I think she’s trying to return the favor, maybe.” Christ, that hurt to watch.

“You alright, Spike?”

He was about to spout off a quick, facile answer, but Buffy deserved more from him at this point. “Feel a bit odd.” Understatement of the bloody century. /Must not have the hang of the transition yet, is all. Or maybe it’s something about this sodding dimension? Wasn’t so hard back home. Though, that, too, was in the heat of a bloody battle. Would be a laugh, though, yeah, if it's the dimension, it being a demon’s paradise and that, and my own personal git’s too relaxed to pick his head up and look about unless there’s a nice brawl./ Angelus had always said he’d gotten a rum one. What if the bastard had been right all along? What if he had a poncy demon what just couldn’t cut it? /After all, isn’t this is just the sort of place sods like my lot should want to come out to play? If I’m any sort of proper demon at all, you’d think I’d be wide fucking awake. Not that I’ve been anything like a proper demon for so bleedin’ long no doubt I’ve forgotten how to do it. Probably why the prat’s glitching. Can’t be a right menace anymore if it ever was one./

/Or maybe/ he supposed belatedly, /chalk it up to another black mark against soul-having?/ Except… It felt more… organic than all that. Like it had nothing to do with the soul at all, and entirely to do with the demon itself. Tough to tell, though, since even after a hundred and twenty years living as the demon, and with the thing’s sensibilities shaping the better part of his being, with the soul as his current frontspiece he found it sodding difficult ofttimes to suss out the bugger’s motivations. 

Any road, sorting all that out wasn’t important at the moment. What was was tending to Buffy. “You, luv? Place affecting you at all? Aside from the water business?”

Her eyes on him were solemn. Assessing. And far brighter than they had been. “I feel a little weird, too." She shook her head slightly. "Not sure how much of it is because..." She shook the water bottle a little, and he noted as she did so that her grip on the thing seemed very much more certain. "I feel... It's hard to explain. Kind of like I did before the Master got me, somehow. And a little bit like I did before I was Called, sometimes." A strange, alarmed expression touched her face, not that he bloody well blamed her, if she still felt like a Slayer but weakened somehow. She'd been the hell of a fighter then, in that first year he'd seen her... but that had been after she'd done for Nest. He hadn't seen her before then. And he for damned sure hadn't seen her as a sodding Potential. What that must feel like for her...   
  
/Seems I'm not the only one affected. Christ, I sure the bloody hell didn't want that for you, pet. Not in a place like this! I can be as defective as I need to be in this shitehole, but _you..._ You need all the help you can get in a sodding demon dimension!/   
  
"Not like being fully human," she reassured him swiftly, as if reading mien. "I have all my instincts. More, even, than I had as a Potential." She looked away from him briefly, an odd expression twisting her face. "I... I lost those, once. You weren't there, but..."   
  
What the bloody hell? How had she...  
  
"I don't know what I'm saying. It's like everything comes in waves. Like my... Slayer side is..."

"Resting up?" Spike hazarded, and put the rest aside for now.  
  
She made a face; almost in negation, he thought. "No. Distracted?"   
  
/The hell?/ That for damned sure was different to his experience. His demon-bits weren't in any way distracted. That bit of him was just fucking somnolent.  
  
"But when there's a fight, it all comes roaring back." She favored the half-empty water bottle with a protracted stare. "And, you know, the heat-thing, and the water thing... But I think it's... getting better.”   
  
He supposed they should all be grateful for that bit, at least. /Everyone's demons will come out to play if there's a nice rumble in the offing, but that's all. Dozy gits. You lot figured, what? You left your own dimension behind, thought, 'We're not at war here, so might as well have a lie-in', is it? Well, there's still a war on in this one as well, innit? Got things to do, so get off your arses and be useful!/  
  
Buffy roused then, and a strange expression touched her lovely, shining countenance; one he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen from her before, and Spike had admittedly made something of a vocation out of memorizing Buffy Summers’ many expressions. “I know you didn’t ask for this…” She waved her hand, encompassing all that they were facing. “It’s a lot of pressure, what we’re doing right now.” She pushed herself to her feet. “For what it’s worth, you’re impressing me with your leadership skills.”

He blinked at that, quite thoroughly taken aback. “I’m not the bloody leader.”

Buffy regarded him blandly, but with a tiny smile playing at the corners of her gorgeous lips. “I don’t know who you _think_ has been leading us for the past hour, but it sure the heck hasn’t been me. I’ve been out of it from sunstroke or whatever, and I’m no good at demon dimensions. Illyria has actually been deferring to you for some reason—maybe because she’s feeling uncertain without the team or something—but you’re in your element right now, and you’re doing great.” She sobered to look into his eyes with that same solid, blazing certainty that had blown him away down in the basement when she’d first told him she believed in hm. “You’ve been _leading_ us, Spike.”

He might have staggered if she hadn’t taken that moment to catch his unoccupied hand as she said it. /Bloody losing it, for sure./ “We’ve got to get that leash off you, Slayer. It’s starting to affect your thinking.”

She shrugged and knocked back a little more water with her free hand. Gave his a squeeze and dropped it with an easy shrug. “Probably should leave it on, if only for looks. In case someone else asks why you have me around. I get the feeling around here humans are only for food or…” She stopped, blushed just a tad.

“Fucking?” he suggested wryly.

“Well. When in Rome. And I’ve been living in Rome, and they’re pretty serious about that there.”

He had no idea what to say to that, so he kept his gob tight shut. After a minute or two he realized he had let his fag burn down to the nub, and dropped it in the street before it could start his fingers on fire. He was too lost in thought to smoke anyway; not to mention that he only had about four smokes left and out. Then he’d apparently need to come across some Sulcranian ploi-dust to trade for his next pack of Morleys, and who knew when he’d find any of _that_… 

Probably he’d just have to nick his next pack.

“We almost got found out because my bite-scars are so old, didn’t we?”

“What’s that pet?”

“My bite-scars,” she repeated patiently. “You had to make up some garbage story about biting me wherever else to get your jollies, because the only visible bite-marks I have are years old.”

He leaned back against the wall at that, feeling the grin break out, and crossed his legs. “Well, luv, if you _were_ my toy, I for damn sure _would_ be biting you while I fucked you. You’d be marked along every bleedin’ blood vessel you had. So it makes a convenient fiction. But.” He shrugged lightly. “We can always pass off those buggering awful marks as mine.” He felt his lips writhe with distaste. “Though Christ knows I wouldn’t have made such a sodding mess of your pretty skin if it was me did it.”

She looked slightly offended. “You can barely see Dracula’s…”

“Yeah, at least that ponce has some style.”

That took her aback. “You mean Angel’s?” His continued, judgmental silence appeared to sting her. “He was _dying!”_

“Yeah? And it looks like he damn near drained you.” She blanched, which he hadn’t expected. It jolted him, and he straightened up, the curl of belated dread coiling in his stomach. “He did, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t know what he was doing,” she whispered.

“That sodding _bastard_.” He was going to go find his grandsire and rip him in half with his own two hands. What a fucking graceless…

“Look,” she flared through gritted teeth, “you weren’t there. He was barely coherent. He wasn’t _trying_ to kill me, he was just…”

“Buffy,” Spike managed, though it came out through clenched teeth, “if you gave him the willing gift of your blood—Slayer’s blood—to keep him alive, he better have damn well kept a lid on himself. But he’s never once tried to control the feed; not in his long life. He’s eaten rats, bagged it, but when it comes to his demon and humans, he’s never tried to learn control. That’s on him for being a cunt.” 

She flinched, started to her feet. He didn’t let her begin. “And he sodding well never learned to leave ‘em unmarked when he had a taste, did he? Bet he hurt you, yeah? Gnawing on you like that with every tooth he had, like a damn fledge; almost as sodding bad as old batface with his mouthful of daggers. Bet it hurt like hell.”

She blinked, arrested mid-windup. “Isn’t it supposed to hurt?”

The tragedy of it bubbled up in him, came out in a bark of sardonic laughter. “If it always felt like that, luv, why do you think people like your soldier-boy kept coming back to get a taste, over and over again?”

“Because they like pain?” Buffy demanded, flinging her empty water bottle aside in exasperation. “The same reason people cut themselves or whatever? To feel alive?” It all seemed to flare up in her like a boil being lanced. “The same reason I hit you and you hit me and we kept coming back for more with each other even though it almost destroyed us?”

Low blow, and he winced, but forged on. “No, Buffy,” he answered, low and intense. “Because if you do it right; if you time it right and you really _listen_… you can get someone off so hard doin’ it they feel like they’re flying. It’s the best rush since drugs, and you don’t even have to take anything. And I get the rush and so do you, so everyone’s happy.” He shook his head. “The only reason Peaches didn’t make it feel good for you is he didn’t know how; because he’s never bothered to try to learn. Because he spent a long unlife making it hurt for people; on purpose. Because all he ever learned to enjoy was inflicting pain.”

She was shaking her head now, denial written all over her, in every line and pore of her being. 

He had to push it. Not because he thought she’d ever let him have such grace, but because she had to know that she was wrong. “Did it hurt when Drac bit you? He’s a ponce, but reputation says he does it right.”

Her voice was low when she responded; pensive. “No. It felt…” Her lips drew tight into a line. “I didn’t want to feel what he wanted me to feel.”

It was a start. “Yeah, and no doubt old Batface didn’t want it to feel good either, the quick and dirty bugger, so your comparisons are all off. Sodding masher. He was only in it to do you in.” He shrugged and looked away, out toward the alley, fought back the frustrated tears. “You know why you can always feel him, luv?”

Buffy was nonplussed at his abrupt change in conversational direction. He could tell by the shaky, startled tone in her voice. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Angel,” Spike answered miserably. He swiveled back to gesture accusingly at the side of her pretty throat. “Why you can’t get away from him, no matter how long it’s been or how much you’ve sodding grown apart?” And when she eyed him in surprise his fingers slid up along her neck to rub lightly over the bite marks resting there; a permanent emblazon of ownership. “It’s because of this, pet.” She blinked at him, clearly taken aback. He pressed on before she could rustle up some kind of counter-protest. “The blood-bond, yeah? He’s marked you as his, good and proper. He’ll always be able to call you back, keep you his, on some level. Forever. Unless someone else takes on the bond.”

Buffy started back away from his fingers, looking horrified. “But… No. He didn’t… I felt connected to him even before he… And he didn’t do anything _but_ bite me, to get better. Didn’t say anything, or…” She frowned, shaking her head in denial. “And he wasn’t even the last one to bite me. Dracula…”

“But you staked _him,”_ Spike reminded her patiently. “Doesn’t matter if the git evaded you in the end. You broke that bond. And you dusted old Batface, so he’s out; not that he was tryin’ to bond you, just put you down. But words or no, Peaches would’ve claimed you; in his mind, in his actions, in his intent.” He had to look away, down at his boots. It just hurt too bloody much, knowing what he had never had, would never have with his woman, that his sodding grandsire had had the grace of and cast aside like it was shite. /Fucking _twice!_ Dru, and now you./ “He took you and he kept you, Buffy, whether he intended it or not; or you’d’ve let him go long since. And he’s still right here, holding on to you with all he’s got, innit? For as long as he can.”

Her silence dragged his gaze back, and, oh hell. Her expression both pained him and brought him a kind of surcease. She had had no bloody clue. And now it was dawning, finally; the realization that she’d been had. That she’d been owned. For years. She looked down and away, and he thought he saw tears in her eyes. And he abruptly felt regret, hated himself for even bringing it up. “Oh, hell. I’m sorry, luv. I shouldn’t’ve…”

“Why didn’t you ever try?” she asked, still glaring off at her feet.

/Eh?/ “What’s that?”

Her head swiveled back, and she regarded him fiercely through the tears. “To bite me?” she demanded. “I know you wanted to. Every time we…” She cut off, clearly at the verge of some sniffles. 

/Well, sodding hell. Of fucking _course_ I did. Want to every fucking second I’m around you, but what the hell kind of idiot question is that?/ Spike lifted a thumb to brush away a tear before it could fall. “Wouldn’t do that, Buffy. You think I’m that stupid? Doesn’t matter how desperate bad I want to taste you, or how high on the moment I am when I’m buried in your quim or lost inside you and you’re cumming all around me like thunder, or how bloody damned much I’d love to erase any trace of those bastards on your body and make you mine. You told me you weren’t. It’s up to you, yeah?”

She closed her eyes, and he was alarmed to note that she was shaking. “I always knew I could trust you. I wouldn’t have been there with you if I couldn’t. All that time, everyone thinking I was crazy, but you stopped yourself doing the one thing that would have been the worst breach of consent imaginable…”

Her insight, belated though it was, hit him hard. It didn’t absolve him of his other sin—the other violation he had nearly taken of her, and would have done if she hadn’t brought him to his senses—but the fact that he had never let his slavering, starving demon do to her what was in his very nature to do… “Buffy…”

“And everything in you was screaming at you to do it, every time. Wasn’t it?”

“Buffy.” She needed to stop.

“Wasn’t it? Because it’s how you claim… a mate, right?”

/Sodding hell./ “Well, yeah. I mean, when you nest with someone, or if you stay with your sire… Dru bit me all the time.”

She watched him sadly. “And you bit Dru?”

Spike snorted a harsh, pained laugh at that. “Oh, no, pet. That honor went strictly to her ‘Daddy’.” At Buffy's confused blink, “You know. The great and wonderful Angelus.” Her expression cleared from confusion to dislike. “Yeah. Could call myself that all I wanted tryin’ to get her to believe it, but…” He picked up some bit of debris from the street, pitched it away from himself, as if he could ever throw away that old hurt. “Whatever I might’ve told myself, I was hers, but she was never mine.”

He saw it in her face, in her eyes; the recognition, and the regret. Looked away. After a moment she frowned a little. “So… you never got to claim… anyone?”

He shrugged it off, tried to tell himself it didn’t actually matter. “Wasn't the sort of... Did I do that, I'd have to tend to them, yeah? Dru was the sort to take on the occasional toy, only to toss them out after a day or two. I was the one had to take care of all her sodding minions. Clean up the messes. Didn't want to make my own; not when it didn't mean... If I didn't get to keep..." He closed his eyes, shook his head. "It wasn’t something I felt pulled to do until…” He cut off abruptly, afraid to say any more and aware of how poncy and hoarse his voice had gotten.

She’d heard it anyway, and looked down at his shirt. Moved a bit closer, voice going quiet. “I didn’t understand what it meant.”

He scoffed into her neck, still rigid and defensive. “Buffy, even if you had…” Tried to push away. “Let’s just let it go, yeah? We have a lot to deal with right now, and…” And yelped when her hands fumbled with his belt. “What are you _doing_, you mad bint?”

“Shh.” Her hands hadn’t stopped, had gotten the belt open, and now one was fumbling with the button and the other was on his neck, keeping him close…

He shoved at her, got her grip off his nape, pushed his palms against her shoulders. “Sodding hell, Buffy; we’re in the middle of a demon hellscape, and you want to play hide the sausage, _now?_”

“No,” she told him, and knocked his hands away to slide her arms back up around his neck. Swung around to put her back up against the nearest alley wall, and pulled him against her. “I want to make up for lost time. Demon-style.”

He blinked owlishly at her. “What?”

One of her hot, deft little hands slid under his shirt to tweak one of his nipples. “Catch up, Spike, or this will take too long.”

You’d think he was a Frugosh demon, he was having such a tough time keeping up. “Buffy, I… Are you…”

One all-too-knowledgeable palm paused briefly mid-slide back south, and her eyes lifted to his. Caught for a moment, glimmering a little with a parade of emotions; and so bloody verdant. Wavered. “I’m not… trying to take us back to a place we… shouldn’t be anymore.” And her expression firmed. Turned candid. “I’m not trying to use you. I really would rather take more time…” A faint, ironic smile quirked her lips. “But somehow I think it’s really not the venue. So.” Her hand headed rapidly south once more. 

He was still working through a cascade of near-impossible surmises to be gleaned from that bit of confessional, and so didn’t quite keep up till she… ah. Got his attention again. She had him inhaling in near-shock when she set about working her hand inside his half-undone zip, made herself a bit more room to work. “Christ; oh _Christ…_ Since when… did you like taking so many damn chances getting caught?”

“Where have _you_ been?” Before he could exclaim that that wasn’t at all what he’d meant she had caught his cock roughly, began to stroke; and holy sodding fucking _God_, it had been way too goddamn long since she had had her hands on him. Not since the night before he’d dusted, and that night had been so bloody confusing that…

Her eyes were focused, steady on his. “Let me see you, Spike.”

“What?” His brain had slid out through his ears. Or, rather, dribbled down to settle into her hand, but, you know. He should probably be forgiven for that. Christ it had been ages. His poor prick probably didn’t have a clue what was happening right now, though it seemed to be remembering right quick. 

“Let me see _you_, Spike.”

He couldn’t process that, wasn’t sure what she was asking. Moved in instinctively… and by some miracle stopped just shy of putting his hands on her. “You need to tell me you’re sure,” he managed, somehow, thickly.

“Are _you?”_

/What?/ _“Buffy!”_ He was going to fall apart. It came out half pleading, half demand.

“If I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t be here,” she whispered, hot in his ear. So many meanings behind that, all of them things he couldn’t parse right now… and he gave in. That final question had been all he’d had left. Her mouth was moving on his neck, his face, and he ceased capacity for any other function; just came in for what he knew how to do. Started kissing her; neck, mouth, whatever he could reach. Hungrily, desperately; hopefully with some hint of his old finesse…

Oh, fuckit. His hands went to her jeans. Got snap and zip undone with shaking fingers while he worked at her throat with teeth and lips and felt her moving against him; and Christ, her hands on his cock hadn’t forgotten a trick, and she should probably slow down and give him time to catch her up, or he wasn’t going to be able to sort her out before he went off like a waterspout.

He got the sodding jeans half off of her finally, her helping to get one leg out by some complicated magic he couldn’t fathom, and why she had to wear such tight clothing was beyond him. Not that he didn’t enjoy it when it came to looking. Had her up against the cinder blocks, one now-freed hand under her shirt to attend to her nipples while the other was plunging in to make for her juices so he could ready her. Christ, her clit was like a cherry, swollen in his hand, and to hear her moan again in his ear when he worked her over was like the best music; the finest he had ever heard, and one he had thought he might never hear again. Fuck the Ramones, this was like God’s own choir of hellbound angels, and did he have time to get his mouth on her, here? It likely wasn't safe, but _Christ,_ he wanted… Had missed her like life, like...

“Inside me,” she whispered, and her eyes were blazing on his with demand.  
  
"Buffy, I..." He started to slide down her body; just for a moment, just...

Her hand did not relinquish his cock, squeezed a little too tightly, oh Christ. "Next time. No time. Come here." 

It was a chant, and oh fuck, oh god, he was torn, so torn, but she was probably right, this was probably not the sodding venue, fucking hell. And his hand was back where he wanted his mouth and, yes, alright, next time, because there would be a next time, not in some sodding alley... /_Where?_ Anywhere; fuck.../   
  
But she was working him over and he was rapidly losing focus, his fingers essentially echoing her movements by this point, and... _"Inside_ me," she insisted again, and her eyes burned on him like the sun.

“Fuck yes.” She was already halfway lost when he slipped in, and she was murmuring things about missing him, and too long, and oh _fuck_, being inside her hot depths again was the only heaven he’d ever need. And she was slamming against the wall, and staring hard into his eyes, and he was fighting, fighting against the demon that was suddenly abruptly, _madly_ awake, the sod; badly wanted to rise. Of course, now, after a whole sodding day of trying to rouse the bastard he found himself in the awkward position of trying to keep the bugger down. It had felt so _fucking_ good to have him come up in the fights, so right; but _this_…

But Buffy would want William, she’d want…

Her thumb caressed his eyebrows, gaze locked on his. “Let me see _you_, Spike.”

He stilled, startled. She couldn’t mean… She had never wanted…

Her eyes on him, sure and certain as she had ever been. “Now.”

It was command, and he could not but obey. 

He let the demon rise. And Christ, but did the prat ever come roaring back to wakefulness. Came to throbbing, boisterous life in her arms, like he’d never been napping. It was a thunderous, snarling resurgence, so that Spike half expected her to turn him away when it came to the surface. 

He fought to keep it merely to the visage. Fought to keep contained the glee, the ferocity; to keep the bugger carefully-leashed and bound. He'd never had her like this for a reason, and this was it. Bloody hell, just the smell of her, intensified now with his stronger olfactory organs in play and so close to her neck, her arteries, her skin, was sweet torture. She dazzled his brain; smelled sweetly of her efforts, perfuming them both, the slick of her body like a hot baptism. Like forgiveness, and home, and how was it that he could have this again, when… 

He might have wept, except _Christ_, it was _so_ good; so primal to bury himself in her, hand on her clit and fingers working while she strained against him. So near to her end, closing around him while he slid, in and out and tightened, tightened, drew ever closer…

And fought not to lose control. Fought with everything he had not to let the demon he had been for most of his life to take over completely; as it had last night, during the battle. For whatever reason, here, this new balance was all fucked off, and he was not the demon when Buffy needed him; was William again. And now, when she’d want William…

But sod it, it was difficult. Right now, with her so _close_, and the blood…

He almost lost it. Thought to just put the bugger safely away…

“No. Look at me. Keep your game face on.”

He groaned and buried his face back in her neck. She was trying to torture him, she was trying to kill him, she was…

She was going to cum around him with him like this, and bring him off with the demon laying by… /And you’re going to have to stand it./ Hell; it was going to be like dying again, like going up in flames and turning to dust, but if this was the price to pay…

Her breath was catching, oh Christ…

And then she tilted her neck.

He stopped dead. No. She couldn’t be offering what she seemed to be offering.

But then she opened her bright green eyes to look him straight in his. And they were clear with decision. Shining, even; and her voice, if husky with need, was certain. “You said there was a right time?”

He started shaking. Oh bloody, buggering, bleeding Christ, this wasn’t happening.

“Spike?”

He lowered his forehead to hers, breathing hard and unnecessarily and unable to move as the profoundness of the moment hit him, hard. Sod trusting him back in her bed again. Sod even just giving him blood, letting him bite her. She wanted him to _claim_ her. To take the bond over. To make her _his_. Oh, fucking hell; the gift she was giving him right now was so unbelievably important and powerful and… _intimate_ that it was almost beyond his comprehension, because it was made in full knowledge this time, and in full trust that he wouldn’t misuse it. 

And it was _Buffy_.

The leather thong sat loosely enough on her neck, that mockery of a claim, that it was now riding up a little to expose her carotid just so, and it would be _so_ easy to just dip in and… And did she really _want_ him to…

“I want you to. If you want to.”

“If I…” He choked on it, the emotion flooding him. “Bloody hell, Slayer… Oh, Buffy…” 

He held her face. Kissed her, gently as he could with his fangs out, so he wouldn’t hurt her mouth, and hoped that it wouldn’t horrify her with his game face on. Lowered his forehead back to her shoulder, slipped his fingers back to her clit, and went back to his work; readying her. Making it right. Oh, god, it had better be right. So right that she’d never knew what hit her… till it hit her. Then, by god, he’d make her cum so hard she’d want him to do it again and again and again until that’s all they ever did.

“Oh. My. _God_. Spike. PLEASE!”

Her heart was stuttering. Her quim was starting to quiver around him; the warning just before she came, to clench around him like a lovely, punishing fist. He could smell the rushing tide of hormones rising from her skin, from the drop about to start. It was time. He was shaking as he turned her head, tilted it away so he didn’t have to look at Angel’s mark, and all the others. And, ignoring her inhale of surprise at this unexpected move, slipped his fangs into virgin flesh. 

And convulsed, fighting not to cum immediately, at the raging, living taste of Buffy Summers’ vibrant Slayer blood. /Fucking sodding _Christ!_/

His demon-self bellowed his claim to the entirety of universe and time as she came on his cock, in his hand, like a goddamned vise; and she was screaming too. So loud he had to cover her mouth with the other so that they didn’t draw unwanted crowds, as she clamped down hard enough on him he was going to be bruised… but in that fucking _good_ way. And the rush of tasting blood from a pumping heart was always _sodamngood_—and after so long, Christ!—but from one pumping full of sex was even better. Stir in that it was a Slayer—_The_ Slayer; _his_ Slayer—and fuck, this was the best he had ever…

Circulation or no, he came so hard he damn near passed out. And the entire time, he knew he was chanting her name.

***  
  
  
  
Don't worry. They'll take the time for some more... ah... thorough reacquaintance when time and circumstances are more friendly. There were reasons, both thematic and, obviously, environmental... (and, plotty) for this particular, ah, type of liaison at this particular moment.   
  
Heh. Besides. Nothing wrong with breaking a few bricks, right?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all!  
So. Afterglow. In hell, it can only last so long before shite happens. But, you know... Hopefully the other stuff is also interesting, *g*  
Have to set up... basically the entire rest of the story, after all. Not that the foregoing didn't also set up majorly important goodies...

“You didn’t bite the same side.”

He was never going to move again. 

He felt like he could get up and rip down a mountain, and he was never going to move again. It was a peculiar juxtaposition, but when you had a sated Slayer on your chest, curled up like a cat and playing cute finger-games with your nipples, you stayed where you were and wrestled the mountains tomorrow.

Maybe a nice horde of hungry demons would come along presently and he could tear their heads off single-handedly; just to show off for her. The thought made him growl in anticipation… which was when he realized that his demon was still well up, fangs and all. Git.

Christ, he’d forgotten what Slayer blood was like. “Hmmm? You should drink more water, pet.” Any other time he might’ve fought to send the sodding mercurial prat of a demon to beddy-bye, so as not to offend his love by hanging about in game face… but it seemed foolish to look a gift horse in the mouth at mo’, considering the circumstances. If the bugger was awake, best to keep him that way. /Fighting and feeding and fucking, is it? Running true to form, then./ 

Primal creatures, demons. 

Putting aside the battle last night, Spike had not felt well and truly primal in a long bloody time. It was… really goddamned nice. Simple. Like breathing. Just to _be_, without too much thought, while he stared up into the weird orange sun and idly pondered the phenomenon that was a star that did not burn vamps to dust. It did burn, of course; but as it burnt humans. His skin felt almost… hot, here, between that ruddy odd globe and Buffy's blood, raging through him. The sweat she had shared with him remained damp on his shirt, but drying now. Took away with it some of the heat but leaving behind the glory of her scent, filled with the smells of satisfied sex. Christ, he must never lose this shirt. It ought to go in a museum. “Then,” he rambled on, feeling quite the sated prat, “we should find you some food. I didn’t take much from you—just a mouthful—and from a vein instead of an artery so you’d have the benefit of the oxygen. Wouldn’t want to leave you lightheaded, but still. Probably leave you peckish, maybe a bit dehydrated...”

“Such a gentleman,” she murmured, and fingered the marks. Gave a little shudder, her heart racing a little, deliciously, to his ears, at the sensation. 

He fought the urge to go back there. Spend a little time just licking the mark. Fondling it with mouth and tongue for, oh, the next week, say. “My mother raised me to be one.” And in his nest he had never exactly gotten to do a whole sodding lot of nuzzling of bites, and, well… the thought that he might actually get to bury his face in one of his own for a change was… It was…

Bloody fuck.

Buffy let that one go by without comment, perhaps aware it was a possible minefield. “You barely left a mark, too. I think it’s already healing. And you were right about…” Her skin heated against his, and her heart stuttered briefly. “How it would feel.” She seemed utterly undisturbed by his ongoing demonic visage, which was… really bleeding new for them, and she really must have meant it when she said that she accepted the whole package of him. 

What a bloody revelation. “When you care enough to give the very best…” he managed, and told his undead heart to give over soaring like a ninny. 

The content of her original question finally dawned, then, bringing him down a notch or two, and he frowned darkly at the crimson clouds. “To answer your question, I didn’t bite where the poofter bit ‘cause I don’t want to taste his leavings.” /Never even wanted to have to _smell_ them up close again; not that I can avoid it. Not after Dru, and…/ “Though I wouldn’t mind pissin’ on his fire hydrant, as it were; but I don’t need to mark the exact same spot to do that.” Spike made a sour face. “It’d be like kissin’ Peaches, and I don’t mind sayin’ we’re not exactly close that way.”

There was a short silence from the girl in question, who had gone a little tense. “Did you just call me a fire hydrant?”

Sometimes his mouth was just a bleeding hazard. “I meant the spot, luv, not… Oh, hell. Just forget I said anything.” /Way to ruin the moment, you tosser./

He half-expected her to get up and kick him or something, but she just lay there against him and looked out at the mouth of the alley, clearly thinking of other things. “Does this mean I’ll feel you, now? If we get separated here?”

He tensed at the very thought of her going out of his sight for even a moment… and then realized, quite belatedly, that there might have been more than a few practical aspects to her having decided to allow him to claim her, here and now, in this place. “Yeah. Should do.” That was his Buffy. Pragmatic as all get out. And it shouldn’t feel a bit of a let-down that she had had some calculated reasons for what had been the most romantic moment of his entire existence to date. It didn’t negate what she had given him, did it? Still, it would have been nice if it was entirely spur-of-the-moment and motivated by a wish to recommit entirely to their relationship and all that rigmarole…

“I hope so. Because I haven’t felt Angel since we landed here in this place. I mean, I feel _you_, now, right here when I’m laying here touching you; but unless he got dropped super far away from us, you’d think…” 

Spike sat up a little to regard her, frowning. “You didn’t feel anything? Before I took the bond over?” She should have done. Prat ought to have been close enough, unless they’d all been scattered to hell and back by whatever magicks had brought them here.

She shook her head solemnly, and he felt the twinge of fear in her. “You don’t think that means he’s…” She clearly couldn’t bring herself to say it.

/Dust. Could be./ Best not to suggest that to her right now, though. He surprised himself by feeling a mild regret at the possibility himself. “Could be that it just doesn’t work over the same distances here that it does in our world, yeah? I wouldn’t worry about it, pet. Let’s just focus on staying alive for now.” He set her gently aside and pushed himself reluctantly to his feet, zipping up as he did so. They should end the siesta, get back to their ramble. That was, if Illyria ever returned from her “patrol”. 

With a regretful sound, Buffy moved to rise. He paused in his belting-job to hold out a hand for her. She took it and let herself be hoisted to her feet, struggled back into her jeans and fastened them, and Christ, she looked wonderfully disheveled and just plain fucked good and proper right now. And she smelled of him. Her crimson blouse, dusty and marked all along the back, dipped low so that he could glimpse his bite, standing proudly on her neck, which, just… Christ. His leavings in her dark trousers, soaking into her pretty pink panties… His cock was swelling again just looking at her.

“Calm down,” she told him with a knowing look, and threw the leather thong purposefully over her shoulder. Bent down to grab another water and crack it open, and her jeans were already damp with him, and he could have her back against the wall again in a trice; oh Christ, he was going to get them killed if he couldn’t control himself, but it had been way too fucking long. 

He pressed his palm hard against his prick in desperate admonition, feeling like a dog in heat. “Slayer, you’re gonna be the death of me.”

She threw a flirtatious glance over her shoulder at him as she sipped from the bottle; just daring him not to explode looking at her, and it was gonna be a long day in hell. If this place ever had nights, that was. 

Before he could lose his head completely, Illyria broke the tension by falling from the sky like a meteor, corpse and all. “You must cease your sex-play. A troop of warriors outfitted much like those we have recently fought approach within a block of this position. They appear to be a patrol unit of some kind. We should depart and find a new route.”

End of idyll.

Spike found himself, inanely, composing new odes to Buffy Summers as they resumed their line of march toward the demon-version of Beverly Hills. It couldn’t be helped, though. Her blood was singing in his veins, and her just there to make of him a right buggered Ulysses, lusting madly after his own personal siren. Not to mention he could smell the ambrosia of her continued arousal as the new bond worked its ways with her, attuned her to his body, made the blood thrum between them. On top of which, he was high as fucking a kite, as well. He could have taken on whole troops single-handed if it weren’t for the business of sticking to a sodding plan. Denied in his urges to continue, ah, consummating the linkage between them in a repeated and celebratory manner for the foreseeable future, his now very thoroughly awake demon berserker really just wanted to party right now. 

Truly. Punk rock style. 

Problem being, they had something to protect now. 

Turned out to be a good thing they'd got the water, because they started to pick up refugees on the trek, along about La Brea. Garnered a couple more hovering about Cedars Sinai as if the sods were hoping some medicos were still hanging about to help them get along; quite a number moaning about loved ones dying inside, who wouldn’t leave because they couldn’t. That bit damn near broke Buffy. No doubt she’d been thinking of her mum. Hadn’t been his favorite moment either; not only because of Joyce, but because he knew what it was like to pray for a person who oughtn’t to die and was going to without help for it, and Christ, this was most definitely hell. 

Leaving that lot behind had been the worst, but they’d gleaned a few followers. A few more as they’d gone on. By the time they neared their goal they had accumulated a round half-dozen ducklings, or nearabouts. All human, all terrified—of Illyria, of his face and fangs, of their changed circumstances in general—and thank Christ they had the Slayer around to convince the lot that these two demons, at least, were friendlies, or this bitty flock of theirs would have gone like a covey of scared quail; all of them, into the woodwork before it could collect into the ragtag little band it was becoming.

Hell, when had he ever become a sodding Pied Piper, much less an Old One? Buffy, he understood, but what the bloody hell was going on in this place?

As it was, not a few of the stragglers scarpered right off at the sight of them; probably to their doom, and maybe he should send the sodding demon back under again if this was the result. Except, they were still running into skirmishes every few blocks. Six of one and that; no way to win. /Whatever way the damned I Ching falls, bein’ in full kit or no, somehow there’s a liability. Best to just pick one and roll with it for the nonce./

As if losing a load of hapless pulsers to the wilderness wasn’t enough, on top of the business with the hospital, and watching Buffy’s despair over their likely fates… Illyria was starting to go on the blink. 

The first time it happened was around La Cienega Park. They were all taking a breather; them and their crew of, at that point, three spare pulsers. He and Buffy, it must be said, were doing a damn fine job of not jumping one another’s bones, like very proper and respectable persons who had other things to think about besides shagging the leaves off the trees. Which would have been, honestly, as much at this point to help her stop thinking about the ones as had gotten away as because the bond was just shimmering between them like an unseen tether made of lust and want and… And halting wasn’t necessarily the best thing for self-restraint when it came to testing out a new claim. Though, Spike liked to think he was doing a damn fine job of controlling his instincts, considering he’d never had a claimed mate before; and this was _Buffy_ who’d allowed him to...

He might eventually have dragged her around one of the heat-shocked boles and sod the audience, the way she was looking at him, and definitely considering the way she had to go about smelling aroused as fuck… save that one of the survivors—who, he had to admit, looked a fair bit like Wes—came walking up right then to ask if he could have some of the water. Which was when the Smurf grabbed at her head as if it were trying to come off, shrieked a bit, shouted, “No, no, no, no, no,” about fifteen times... and then dropped her rotting teddy and began flopping like a boned fish.

Scared the shite out of him, and he didn’t mind admitting it. “Illyria. You alright?” 

He recoiled then, because she was draining of color, and… Bloody fuck. That was Fred, lying there; bitty brown sundress and all, and Christ, this wasn’t happening. 

“I’m… Spike?”

Oh, bugger it; she even _sounded_ like Fred, all shaky and uncertain and with the accent. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded of no one in particular, and yeah, he probably sounded harsh, but it was a real pisser to see a copy of a bird he’d liked so much after she’d died in such a bloody awful way. 

Definitely enough to put him off his libido. 

The bint looked confused as all hell, and this wasn’t supposed to be possible. /In _our_ dimension, maybe, but…/ 

Hell. It wasn’t meant to be possible anywhere. Fred was _gone_, and no use pretending otherwise. This was a trick and it was brassing him right the fuck off. “'No' is sodding right!”

“Is she okay?” Buffy asked, looking mildly concerned. “Her blue’s all gone.”

Spike realized only then that his fists were clenched at his sides, his arms trembling with fury and frustration. “I don’t know, Slayer. She’s gone and turned back into Fred.” /Not fucking fair, not fucking right, not fucking real. Just, _no_./

Buffy looked more than a little thrown at that. “I thought Fred was dead.”

He might just punch something. Badly needed to punch something. “Supposed to be,” he managed shortly; because it hurt like hell to see the chit again, he didn’t mind saying. Not especially knowing it had to be some sort of cruel trick, or…

If it wasn’t… 

/No. Don’t dare think it. Don’t fucking dare, Spike. Don’t bloody go there!/ 

The Wes lookalike who had triggered all this was standing there with his water bottle, clearly afraid to move. Spike waved him irritably away. “Bugger off, boy, before you do any more damage.”

Blinking, the bloodied, tousle-headed creature buggered off. 

Buffy watched him go with a frown, glanced back at Illyria-Fred. “You think it triggered something because… What? That guy looked a little like…” She hesitated. “Wesley?”

“Might be. No idea.” On impulse he moved to grab the confused Old One by the shoulders. /Has to be. Can’t be anything other than…/ “Oi! Illyria! Snap out of it! You can’t be human right now. Not with all this shite going on, so get your Smurf hair back in place and go to work!”

“Spike?” Light brown eyes looking up at him, reading nothing but utter confusion. Sweet Texan twang on her voice. “What are you… Why are you mad at me?” Back to clutching her head and huddling up, and just a whole lot more bloody rocking. 

He damn near dropped her, cast her away from him, hearing it, but it hurt him so bloody badly, made him so ruddy angry that… “Right.” It was going to pain him like anything to hit someone wearing Fred’s face, and when she snapped back Illyria she would probably turn him into a little pile of cinders, but it needed doing. He pulled back an arm to slap her… and was forestalled when Buffy caught his arm at full extension. 

“Don’t.”

“She can’t stay like this, Slayer. She’s vulnerable.” Christ, his voice was shaking. He hardened it up fast. “And if I’ve learned anything about Illyria, it’s that a threat brings her up full-force; all Old One, all the bloody time.”

Buffy’s eyes on his were hard, uncompromising. “We don’t even know what’s causing it. If she can even control it. What’s even happening.” Her hand tightened on his taut bicep. “That might not even be Illyria right now.”

/Jesus fuck, I bloody _can’t_ with this./ Thing of it was, if Buffy was in any way right… No way he could damage that little bird. Ever. 

At a sodding loss, he lowered his hand slowly with a heavy sigh. He supposed the Slayer was right. It could be some kind of outside force. A spell, or… Lifted the hand instead to rub it anxiously through his hair. And with a sigh, gently lowered the chit to the ground. Turned away, stalked off a short distance to stand, hands behind his head, fingers laced together, aware he was thrumming with tension and not at all sure what the bleeding hell to do about it. “I mention I hate this dimension?” 

Buffy followed. Glanced around them as if assessing the place. “I’ve seen more charming neighborhoods,” she agreed. She then surprised the hell out of him by laying a gentle hand on his shoulder, as if to soothe him. Wholly unexpected, that. It had the effect of smoothing his shoulders as if by magic, and he lowered his arms abruptly to stare at her in amazement. 

With a faint half-smile, she let her hand drop, but only so far as to slide it down his arm, squeeze his hand lightly. With him still watching her to see what she’d do next—hell, he couldn’t imagine her acting like this with him when he was all fanged out; had barely done so before, in those last few months, when he was being incredibly careful, in her basement—she cocked a brief, appreciative eye his direction. Squeezed his hand again, her eyes warm. “Though I have to admit you look nice in sunlight,” she informed him softly.

Oh. Well. So, she was taking a page out of his own book to jolly him along. Bit of innuendo, bit of admiration… Usually his gambit, when she was feeling stressed or down. /That how it is now, Slayer?/ 

A’ course, didn’t hurt that she was willing show him he wasn’t the only one having a tough time concentrating on business, no matter how dire, with their blood mingling and the new bond dancing between them on a vibrating umbilicus of want. 

Closing his eyes briefly, Spike clenched his teeth together, feeling a bit like he was coming apart at the seams. Squeezed her hand back, in thanks, and pulled in a fortifying breath to remind himself he had things to do, damnitall. Business to attend to, no time to let himself fall apart. “Thanks, luv,” he told her softly. “Right nice of you to say.”

“No charge,” she told him softly. 

/Right, then./ “Bloody hell.” Turning, he headed back for Fred (?). Slid an arm under each end of the chit and, with an unnecessary grunt, hefted her arse over teakettle to carry her along. “Right, you lot,” he bellowed to the other three pulsers. “We’re moving out.” Lucky for him right now the slight girl weighed less even than Dru had. 

“I’ll take your mace,” Buffy told him, plucking it out of his hand before he could protest. “I know it’s gonna screw up the image, me all loaded for bear—or demon—while you’re Mr. Unarmed Guy with the wilted maiden in your arms…”

He snorted. Great sodding load she knew about his image, deep down.

“But you don’t have any free hands right now, and I felt naked for long enough without the stupid axe. Double-barreled sounds fun for a while.” She made a belligerent face. “I could really get down with killing something right now.”

He just grunted and gave over. He rather knew the feeling.

They were three streets past the park when Illyria came stooping back in to retake her ‘shell’; an occasion she announced with a sharp, “Release me, my pet, or I will be forced to damage you. I would not wish to do that.”

Spike swore as he half-dropped her back to her feet. She was definitely not Fred anymore. Freakish cobalt eyes, indigo forehead, the works. The swooping, half-terrifying, barely-to-be-whispered hope that Fred might somehow have returned to them sputtered, died a-borning, and his dead heart clenched with it. “Welcome back, Big Blue,” he greeted her dryly. 

Christ, it hurt to be right. 

“I have been invaded.” 

“Something sure happened.”

“It was uncomfortable.”

“I’ll wager it was. You should try not to let it happen again. It makes you vulnerable out here.” /Never be human again. Fred’s gone and you bleeding _knew_ it, you nancy./

“I will endeavor.” The overbright eyes jerked around, seeking. “Where is Wes?”

/Oh, fucking…/ “He’s dead, Illyria. You’re gonna have to let it go. I can’t be bothered with carrying a corpse around…”

Without another word their bonus demigod turned and marched off the way they had come, clearly intent on retrieving her prize. 

Fuck.

Upon her return to their growing column the Leather Queen took point, cadaver and all, much to the clear chagrin of their accumulated pulsers, and this was going to be a bloody problem, wasn’t it.

The ripening odors of the carcass was like to put him right off of his libido; and that took some bloody doing for a bloke who had just claimed the love of his fucking life, a thing he never thought he might ever get to do in _any_ dimension, and was smelling her right there beside him, wanting him. 

Christing killjoy, that Illyria. Couldn’t even enjoy the bloody illusion.

Illyria seemed right teed off about her little problem, and determined to keep it from happening again. Whatever her intentions, however, they didn’t seem to help. Her bitty identity crisis continued. She switched over twice more before they began heading seriously uphill, and each transition seemed to take longer to come unstuck. It was starting to make Spike truly anxious; not a little because each time she bounced back, she always insisted on heading back the way they had come to fetch her fucking pet body. 

He hadn’t realized till she started to go all unstable and shifty on him how much he was depending on Blue’s abilities out here to keep them alive if it came down to a fight, but she was clearly losing her shit in this place. Thank Christ he had Buffy’s solid presence here with him, or what the bloody fuck would he be doing along about now?

Buffy’s eyes, every time they met his, shared his concern. 

They reached Sunset Boulevard, finally, at what felt like should have been late evening, though he could swear that damned sun hadn’t moved more than an inch or two in that fucking unchanging, sweltering sky. By quick, unspoken consensus they called a halt there, in the middle of what must have been Will Rogers Park, though of course there weren’t any working fountains to speak of or anything useful like that. Not at all unexpected, since every city water fountain and the like along the way had had no water in it, and seemed stained with some sort of thick, dark liquid sludge that smelled of sulfur and rot. 

No reason to think things would get better on a higher water table. /Fare the well, San Fernando Aquifer./

The seven spare humans they’d acquired by that point sort of threw themselves down in an abandonment of exhaustion, directly into the remains of the pond in the center of the park, reveling in the lukewarm algae and clearly uncaring that they were likely to get salmonella or some shite if they happened to get any of it in their mouths. Buffy did a bit of splashing herself, truth be told, and Spike supposed he couldn’t particularly blame her. The place was so sodding hot that all the bloody grass in the place had gone brown already, what there was of it. Large stretches of the park even sported streaks of something that looked suspiciously like ash and old cinders. 

Well, any road, the place was cooler than any other stopping point. A few desiccated palm trees for shade, this pond-y bit. The flock seemed grateful. The last few water bottles were passed around. The groaning commenced. 

“We’re in trouble,” Buffy pointed out unnecessarily, swiping at her newly-dampened forehead with one dust-streaked arm. Spike would never in this life tell her that it had the effect of marking her face all over again with smudges. Christ, she was gorgeous. “I don’t think we’re ever going to get cover of darkness here… though I guess that might be a good thing in a dimension like this. We’ve got too many civilians to protect if we get rushed, and we’re out of supplies.”

Spike glanced sourly over at the gaggle of gasping pulsers making water angels in four inches of overwarm bilgewater. In the old days he’d have collected them for snackies and maybe, if he took to one, a minion for a mo’ till he tired of the prat. Now he was busy doing the right thing, trying to save the fools. And yeah, they had been lucky so far. Just a few light skirmishes; nothing major. But their luck had to change soon, right?

Well, best to get on as they had been till then, he supposed. “Next order of business is find them some water, yeah? See if we can scrounge something edible, even?”

Buffy sighed and shook out her shoulders wearily. “I’m starving,” she admitted. “That sandwich at the airport was forever ago. Wish I’d kept my churro.”

He winced and threw an arm over her shoulder. “You look knackered, luv.”

“I’ll live.” She glanced up at him, smiling a little. “For some reason you look like you could wrestle a tiger.”

“Hardly fair, is it.” He shook his head. “If I could give you back some of what I got, I would.” /Fuck. Look at her, you git./ “It was probably terrible timing, Buffy, seeing as it looks like you lot’ll be on short rations for a spell.”

“Yeah, well…” She startled him anew when she closed her eyes against his shoulder and relaxed briefly but absolutely against his side. “I don’t regret it. This way if anything happens…”

As if her words had called down the thunder, a loud screech resounded from the heavens. They jerked apart and brandished their weapons skyward, prepared for battle and armed with a new surge of adrenaline…

And saw a dragon bearing down on them, shrieking like a runaway steam engine as it barreled in for the kill. /Hell./

“Doesn’t that look like the one…”

“Does, doesn’t it?” He set himself, taking back the mace she handed him. “You ready?”

“You know it.” 

It swooped low over their heads. They did their best to strike at it, while the cowering humans scattered behind them, streaming tepid water and bits of algae and screaming bloody murder. Illyria came up behind them, deadly supernatural fists at the ready.

Buffy’s left shoulder nudged his right. “You think it found us by scent?”

“All too bloody likely.” /Which means the poofter is probably…/ The last they’d seen of his heroic tosser of a grandsire, he’d been heading off after this thing, to take it down. Clearly, he’d been bloody well unsuccessful.

The wing’ed thing swooped again, coming back in for the kill. One talon grazed Spike’s shoulder before he could react to swing; but strangely, it was the blunt side of the digit and not the point. He ducked and tried for another stab, saw Illyria doing the same beside him, though without a weapon her deadly fists had not the reach to manage a killing blow…

“No, wait! Don’t kill it!”

At Buffy’s unexpected shout, Spike checked himself mid-swing. “Slayer, what the…”

Hostilities briefly suspended, the thing pulled up to sort of hang about awkwardly above them. Illyria joined Spike in turning on the Slayer, who had very obviously lost her sodding mind. 

Buffy, though, was watching the hovering monster with an odd expression on her face. “No, I know, but… I don’t think it’s here to kill us.”

Alright, that was just… “What the buggering hell brought you to that conclusion, Buffy? It looks pretty lethal to me at mo’…”

She shook her head and lowered her axe like a madwoman. “It came with a message. It wants one of us to go with it.”

“You’ve gone barmy.” Spike was thoroughly convinced of his pronouncement.

“Maybe. Probably, but…”

Above them, the creature began to circle lazily in a clear indication of intent to land. At which point, to Spike’s stunned amazement, Buffy slapped a palm to his chest and _pushed him back_ to make room for the fucking thing. “Slayer, what in the name of…”

“The demon-slayer is correct,” Illyria intoned suddenly from Buffy’s other side. “This beast is currently inoffensive. It comes to parley and has no intent to harm.”

/Well… hell./

The dragon had settled to earth before them; a massive creature, perhaps thirty fucking feet in length or some sodding thing. Great lump of galvanic flesh and wings and muscle; could kill every single damned one of them with a twitch of that ruddy massive tail, might be able to breathe fire for all he fucking knew, if it really was the same one and that battle was any indication. And yet it just sat there eyeing them like a damned collie or somesuch, eyes intent and earnest. “So, what the bloody fuck does it want? We supposed to pull a thorn from its soddin’ paw, like a modern-day Androcles? Only that’s no bleedin’ lion, yeah?”

Buffy frowned beside him. “Who’s Androc…”

“Never mind, pet. I just meant, what’s the thing’s agenda? And how the hell are we supposed to figure it out, if it can’t talk?”

Buffy shook her head a little as if she’d got water in her ear or something. The movement dragged Spike’s gaze briefly away from the dangerous tableau, and… /Fuck./ Her eyes, he only now noticed, were cloudy; hazel rather than their usual bright emerald; and they seemed exceedingly distant, like she was tuned into something he couldn’t rightly hear. “Watch. It’s… I think it’s trying to communicate…”

What the bleeding hell was happening to his Slayer? She’d gone directly off her sodding trolley; and at the worst possible fucking time. “You okay, luv? Is the damn thing… doing something to you, or…”

Buffy shook her head again. “No, but it’s like… There’s this urgency in my brain. It’s beating at me like a hammer or something. It says we need to… I don’t know. Pay attention. That this moment’s important.” Her eyes cleared and she straightened, filled with a sudden intensity. “Look!”

He turned his gaze back to the beast, frowning in utter confusion. “What’s it doing?”

Illyria, too, seemed to have altered her focus beside him. She tilted her head in that way she had that meant she was studying something beneath her; like a scientist cataloging behavior of ants who’d suddenly started acting like bees. “It appears to be indicating a wish for a rider.”

Spike stared at the dragon. It was inching its head along the ground toward them in the most conciliating manner imaginable; had it practically flattened to the dirt as it scooted along in their direction, every tuft of hide and horny projection lowered damn near parallel to the soil. “Well. That’s just bloody perfect, innit. How many times in your life you get offered a spin in the air by a dirty great flying lizard, yeah?” He stepped back a bit to avoid getting kissed by the scaly monstrosity. “Any road, don’t know which of us it wants, but it’s not as if we have to take it up on it. Not that I want to brass the thing off, but…”

Buffy still had that note in her voice; that quality that made a shiver work its way up his spine. “It wants you,” she murmured. “And I think the quicker you go, the quicker it’ll leave us alone, and the faster you’ll come back…”

Spike gaped at her, aghast. “Are you off your fucking bird, Buffy?”

She shook her head, oddly slowly. “No, I don’t think I am.”

This was a bad dream. Or a strange test. Or some sort of bloody bizarre torment devised by the rulers of this dimension, or…

The dragon huffed at him, hot breath wafting through his filthy jeans to tickle his legs in a highly unpleasant manner. Any hotter and the thing might singe off his leg hair. Christ. 

Then it, no shit, _nudged_ his boot lightly with its horny beak.

Fuck.

“Illyria and I’ll stay with them. Keep them safe till you get back…”

Spike skipped back a little from the insistent monster. “Buffy, you’re not making a single sodding bit of sense; can you _hear_ yourself?” He wasn’t going to say it aloud, but for one fucking thing, they couldn’t count on Illyria right now to hold up her end on a sodding thing. To make matters worse, the Old One didn’t know his Slayer from Eve. If she went off half-cocked on Buffy without him about, and the whole operation was like to go tits-up in an instant.

Verdant eyes found his, earnest and frighteningly certain. “Spike… it’s not gonna take no for an answer.”

As if to illustrate her words, the dragon nudged close again; peaceful but relentless. And caught a nip of his trousers in its mouth, for fucksake. “Jesus! What the fuck is going on here? Buffy, we don’t know who sent it or why. Our business is keepin’ these soddin’ pulsers safe, not findin’ out what the hell this thing wants! I can’t just go wander off with some… Some random buggerin’ _dragon_ when we have people to protect here…”

“I’ve got them.”

How the hell could she sound so fucking _blasé_ about this?

“You don’t understand,” Buffy whispered to him. “It’s like a pulse in my head. This is _supposed_ to happen…”

She was possessed. The fucking dragon was in her mind—or _some_ bloody thing was—and she needed to come _out_ of it. Right fucking now. 

He tried to shake her. Lifted his fist to punch her, even. Didn’t want to, but he was terrified he was losing her to something. ‘Cept… he didn’t get nearly that far. Instead, her hand caught his. Lowered it. And, of all things, she pried his fingers open, kissed the center of his palm. “Trust me, Spike.”

It broke something in him. “Buffy… Oh, bloody hell, luv, please. Snap out of it. Whatever it is…”

She was the center of his universe when she met his eyes. “I don’t know why. But it’s necessary.”

No. Just no. This wasn’t right, and it wasn’t happening. 

He reached out; on the blood this time. Felt for her along their new linkage. Why he hadn’t thought of this before was beyond him, save that it was new enough that he’d gone first for the familiar; but if she was being held somehow—held away from him—he should be able to get a grasp on her with the claim, one-sided as it was. They had always had the most astounding physical connection, and this was part of it. Now, with her touching him, he should be able to manage it no matter what might be standing in the way. The blood-bond was, after all, something visceral and real and controllable. He could use it to find his way, hand-over-metaphorical-hand to the center of her, where her heart was now bound inextricably to his life-force, and help her to shake off whatever was trying right now to use her or…

Something massively powerful shouldered him off, knocked him aside as it roared through her; like a bright, insane cyclone. And in that brief instant, light filled him. Just the briefest corner of the certainty she must be feeling. 

His game face fled instantly, his demon submerged utterly as if it had gone into hiding. He stared back at Buffy in amazement, his human guise awed. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” she whispered.

“Oh,” he repeated again, dumbly. “I’m s’posed to… do this.”

“Yeah,” she answered, and lifted her hand to tug his face down to hers. “Come back to me soon?”

“Yeah.” He felt drunk; more so than he ever had. Staggered; and yet never so upright as he did in this moment. “Right. Back soonest, pet. You know I’d never leave you long.”

Her lips found his. Pulled him into a kiss that was both loving and bracing; a setting of him on his paths. “I know. Only when you have to.” As she pushed him away, a knowing smile touched her incomparable mouth and eyes. “Go on. I’ll take the next dragon out.”

“Okay, yeah.” He felt like he was talking through a kind of wet muslin had settled over his brain as he turned, hand dropping reluctantly from her face. “Right, then. Keep the kiddies safe for us, pet.”

“Obviously.”

“You wish to depart with the beast?” Illyria demanded coldly. She sounded as surprised as she ever got.

“Looks that way. Will you help Buffy take care of our bitty flock, Queen Bee?”

The Blue Meanie was clearly displeased, but she did not interfere as he mounted up on the back of the dragon’s lowered skull. “You have been hijacked by an outside entity to act in Their interests. It is not the first time you have bowed to Their importunings, but it is the first time you have been in direct contact with Their messages. It is disconcerting that a once-lower-being could be reached directly in this dimension. I must consider this.” And chill, ultramarine eyes turned to Buffy, a strange, almost reptilian consideration touching them. “You are interesting, demon-slayer. You have been invested with a power, here, which I had not considered.”

“Okay?” Buffy’s voice still sounded distant, off. As well she might, with all that… whatever it was that was flowing through her. 

The sense of purpose flooding Spike now filled him with equal urgency. “Well… I’m off. See you when I get back, luv?”

Buffy’s eyes cleared briefly, and she turned her radiant smile on him. “Don’t be gone long, William.”

He shivered at the sound of his given name on her lips. 

And then he was rising above the skeletal trees, with the loud, slow downdraft of flapping wings in a dusty whirl around him.

The ground, and his flock, dropped away. His mate dwindled to a speck below.

It wasn’t until she vanished from his sight that the insanity cleared from his head and he started to curse again. ‘Course, by then it wasn’t as if he could do a fucking thing about it but settle in for the ride.

***  
  
  
  
I'm horrible.  
But there are reasons. I swear.  
  
I plead the fifth.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand... for those of you unfamiliar with the role of the dragon, I present to you the return of the Great Forehead.  
Prepare to be irritated.
> 
> Please note; the following chapter is made up of some POV changes. We return to BuffyPOV for the first two segments, then switch back to SpikePOV for the latter two. I'll also initial their chapters in case it helps.
> 
> I'm trying to stick to about 7k per chapter from here on out, or we're never gonna get anywhere in this thing, because it's monstrous.
> 
> Happy Rosh Hashanah to those who celebrate!

**B:**  
  
/No./ What the hell even _was_ that? What the _hell_ was going on? “Did he just… leave? Did I just _tell_ him to leave?”

“You have been used.”

The Old One was eyeing her with chill interest. It was almost as unnerving as the feeling inside of her; like she had been filled with some kind of insane energy, and it had been abruptly removed, leaving her empty and shaking. “What... Who…”

“You are unexpected.”

“Okay?”

The shrewd, glittering gaze took her in over crossed arms. “I understand why he wishes to mate with you. You are as light to a moth. He has no control over this. You conduct the Power which has drawn him to your side.” Then Xena the Warrior Hellgod stepped back to regard Buffy with something that might even have been… regret. “His interest in my well-being is due in part to my strength, for he is attracted to strength, and his demon to my power; but like all the rest his regard is largely built upon his affection for my shell.” A strange, predatory head-tilt. “Always, the shell. So much power and deference, afforded to such a weak container…” Turning, Illyria wandered off again, like a completely useless wierdo.

/Okay, helpful, much?/ 

Buffy had less than zero time to deal with whatever the hell the caged Old One was ranting about. She needed to get Spike back and pronto. This was all nuts. Just crazypants nutso stuff and none of it made sense… but she could feel him getting further and further away from her with every second, and that was one hundred percent of the not-okay. 

What was even going on today? She felt like part of her should have been shouting in her own face a minute ago, or into his. Pulling him back by his shirt; screaming, even… but it had been like she couldn’t even hear herself over the… The…

It had been like being filled with a tsunami of bizarre certainty that had taken over her every other impulse; a formless, omnipresent light like the kind she encountered in her Slayer dreams, only it had emanated from _inside_ herself. She had been helpless to ignore it. It was impossible to disobey the summons it gave her, and like last night in Spike’s apartment it had been as if words had just popped out of her face…

/Oh. Oh God./

_“You have been used.”_

/By _what_ though? By who?/ 

_“You have been hijacked by an outside entity to act in Their interests…”_

/Ohmygod./ Whatever it had been, it had used her to get to Spike. She needed to fix this. And she hadn’t even been able to stop it, the thrumming in her head had been so stupidly loud. 

She needed to _fix_ this. She needed to go after him, find him somehow before that stupid dragon took him god knew where and did god knew what to him because she had stupidly allowed some… _entity_ to take her over here in this hellhole and…

The memory of Spike’s gaze haunted her; terrified for her. _“Snap out of it!”_

/Oh God…/

The love, the worry in his eyes, as always, nearly bowled her over. And then…

/I sent him away. I always send him away, to go try to die for me. And this time I don’t even know why, or what…/

Just, _no_. There was just no way she was going to lose him now.

Not _now_. “Illyria. Get them under cover. I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’ve got to go find Spike; before I lose sight of that thing.” The dragon was still visible; a seagull-sized blip on the scarlet-ocher eastern horizon.

“You’re _leaving?_ You’re _leaving _us? He told you to _stay!”_ The incredulously outraged voice was that of Jeremy Johns, one of the more recent civilians they’d picked up. He seemed an okay enough guy; even decently capable. Rattled right now, of course, like everyone; and because of that he had quickly become totally enamored of Spike. Like, total man-crush. 

Not that she blamed him. “I won’t be gone long. I have to bring him back.”

“But he ordered you to _stay!”_

“Look!” She swung around to meet the dude, eyes blazing. “You’re new, so I’m going to ignore that you said that, because you don’t know how things work around here, but Spike and I are _partners_. He doesn’t order me around. We give each other advice based on who’s got the best go-to at the time. That person’s the general. He’s been in charge here because he has the demon know-how, but most of the time I’m _his_ go-to. Got it?”

Johns shrank back, looking stunned at her expression, her vehemence. “Now, I’m going to go get my guy, because he and I have been fighting side-by-side since before you ever even _heard_ of demons, and I’d sell you all over in a second to save him. You obey Illyria or you all die. Got it?”

Johns stared back at her, his cohorts looking nauseous behind him. “But… She’s nuts! She’s got that weird obsession with that fucking body, and she keeps turning into that scared woman...”

“If she does it again, take care of her till she turns blue again.” Turning, Buffy tightened her grip on the axe and loped off without another word.

Spike really had been restraining himself by not eating some of them.

***

**B:**  
  
She got rid of the leather thong around her neck first thing. She didn’t need it in her way, and the fiction was obviously no longer necessary now she was on her own. 

Her survival no longer depended on theater, but on stealth. She had to do her best not to be seen… and she had to be quietly lethal when she _was_ seen. Accordingly, she dodged and darted her way back through the city with dogged speed, more or less the way they’d come, eyes always on the path the dragon had taken when it had carried off her lover and stopping only to keep to cover. It was a hellish irony to be marching back over the same eleven-plus miles she had just covered in this damn oven, but this place was probably hell for a reason, and she didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself. 

At least she knew the tricks of the place now. Stick to the shadows of buildings. Avoid patrols of demon soldiers and lone predators; ignore the sounds of suffering all around her. She couldn’t do anything about them anyway, and she had a mission. Couldn’t let anything distract her from said mission, no matter how much it pained her to pass by the agonies, the potential deaths of humans along her line of march. Mostly she just had to hope she didn’t run across anything that sniffed her out and thought she, too, smelled tasty, or wanted to make her their own personal slave. 

She was exhausted. She felt like she hadn’t slept in days—which to be fair, according to her bio-clock she hadn’t; not since whatever power nap she’d gotten on the plane, and what had passed for crap sleep in that shitty Florentine hotel—and she was freaking _starving._ Also, the last water she’d had had been a couple hours ago. But, she had been worse off earlier. She’d live. Even though she was starting to wonder about her staying power in this dimension. She felt different here; more human. Like maybe something about being here was accenting the parts of her that were solely human, rather than the parts that had been infused with demon or whatever; the parts that had been strengthened by her multiple deaths. Which seemed kind of back-assward, considering that if she was going to spend time in a demon dimension, one might think it would be the demon-y bits of her that would be accentuated; but maybe not? 

Sans the high that was Spike’s direct presence, perking in her blood like a drug, she didn’t really feel like herself right now. Not super weak, like she had when she had been through the Cruciamentum, at least, and maybe some of that had a little to do with having done that bonding thing with Spike. /And, you know, all the constant heat and sun and the low rations./ But her instincts, her inner, Slayer-y sense of self told her plainly that there was more to it than than blood-loss or hunger or weariness. She had been through worse; lost more blood, been wearier, and survived to fight on with less of a physical toll. 

No. This was something otherworldly. Something niggling and… different.

For one thing, the few little wounds she had taken during their various skirmishes should have healed by now. They were all shallow. And they _were_ healing, but just… well. A hair slower than normal. Like, they were closed… but they should totally be gone by this point. And for another…

The sex had been very much wanted, but it had been, due to circumstance and in the end, mutual preference, somewhat sudden; and thus mildly rough. Nothing unusual in that from a Spike-and-Buffy perspective, and normally she wouldn’t be feeling it past an hour, if that, no matter how long she had been on, ah, bread and water as it were. However… their little assignation had been hours ago. More than half a day, and she was still a little sore. That was just really not of the norm for her. 

/I’ll take it/ she reminded herself grimly as she dodged from the shadow of one building to the next. For one thing, it had been way too incredibly long since her body had felt so wonderfully used. Pretty much since… Well, Spike, and thus despite the circumstances, her nice little swoosh of endorphins was making it kind of tough for her to feel super concerned about anything, really, beyond the whole getting him back next to her stat. Which was not necessarily of the good, and she needed to keep her head in the game and stop feeling like she’d already ‘won’, because she really was feeling just a hair too relaxed for her own good right now. 

Luckily that was just one level. Separation-worry kept her alert. And, well… the physical, ah, reminders helped with the edginess that had plagued her ever since their little alleyway encounter; the feeling that really, in the grand scheme of things, they should have thereafter devoted, oh, say, the next twenty-four hours straight to some continuous, serious sexual rediscovery. Boy howdy. And not just because she had missed him like woah, but because that whole blood-link thing thrumming between them was like some kind of crazed magnet that somehow, impossibly, made her even more nuts for him. 

That, by the way, was a thing she wouldn’t have thought it was possible before. And while not necessarily a bad thing on a normal day, right now… /Not as much fun when you can’t, you know, _act_ on it… because some weird force took you over and used you to send him off on some weird, wild goose-chase on a _dragon!_/ 

She was going to get him back. And then…

Jumping his bones on the regular with that in between them was going to be pretty A-OK in her book. As if Spike needed any bonus material to make getting down with him even better than it already was. 

/Stop wool-gathering about sex and focus, Buffy./ It didn’t matter if she was not at full Slayer-healing-strength in this dimension. Being thirsty and hungry and tired—and let’s not forget horny—didn’t matter. None of it mattered, really. What mattered was the mission. She had a job to do and she would do it. She would just have to adapt. Which meant taking care of business so that she could complete said mission.

Somewhere back along about San Vincente, near the hospital, she broke into some little market that had only one demon minding the store, killed the thing, stole some water and something that looked vaguely like edible food; stuffed it all in a knapsack that she thought for sure was made out of some kind of creepy hide, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and she couldn’t afford to end up dehydrated again. It would slow the mission. 

By that point she was relying entirely on gut instinct, since her last sighting of the dragon had been about a half-hour after she’d left camp, winging away down just south of east toward, for all she knew, Wolfram and Hart or some lair somewhere to eat her vamp. Clearly somewhere Downtown, before it had vanished in the orange haze. 

Thank god she’d let Spike bite her. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said that it would create a bond or a link or whatever between them. It felt super-similar to the draw she had always felt with Angel. More immediate, of course, since it was so recent—and, you know, she hadn’t died since it happened—and more visceral. More… sensual. Probably because her connection with Spike was so utterly physical. But she could sense him in the same way; feel that he was far away from her, and could zone in on a general direction. Could practically point toward him; and she knew for a fact right now that he was still alive. 

That helped. Helped to keep her from going crazy as she made tracks in the direction the linkage drew her.

Clearly blood-bonds did work in this dimension, distances be damned. She didn’t even want to think about what that meant for Angel right now; didn’t want to think about the abrupt vanishment of her link to her ex when they had first arrived here. She had more pressing concerns at the moment. Like putting one foot in front of the other and avoiding getting herself killed before she could find Spike and rescue him from whatever. 

/Why am I always having to save your ass?/

***

**S: **  
  
Being carried about by a demonic dragon like some sodding faerie-tale princess was bad enough. Hovering hundreds of feet above a burning Los Angeles was worse. A fall like that would possibly kill even a vampire tough as he, should he happen to land in some burning, meteor-ridden wreckage. Then there was the whole question of where the thing was taking him. 

Of course, should he struggle he’d just be dooming himself, so he had to just go with it. After all, it wasn’t like he particularly wanted to try to time a jump off the bloody thing’s neck onto the top of a sodding skyscraper as they swept along. 

Memories still tickled his mind. That light, flooding him from touching his link with Buffy. The certitude of it all. _‘Everything will be fine. This is right’ _and all that rot. 

Likely story. Buggerin’ dragon was probably was taking him off somewhere to eat him, and it hypnotized all its meals this way. 

Buffy was somewhere behind him, going mad over it. He could feel her, which didn’t help, of course. Made him feel a right git for letting himself be carried off like that, but what could he do? He’d been thralled or some damned thing. Recognized it well enough. Been pushed about in that way often enough, after all, by Dru.

The excuse didn’t make him feel any better, though. Or any less vulnerable, swinging about loosely on the beast’s neck and clinging to horny projections for his unlife as they dove and glided over the city, dodging the occasional attack from other wing’ed things. If he had had a working heart, it would have stopped a dozen times during that reckless, insane career of a flight.

Least the exercise had his sodding lazy git of a demon clawing back up to the surface again. Prat. 

It was the hell of a thing to realize he was finally able to access the whole of his inner monster once more; at will, now. Bit late to the party, learning the trick of it, but… /Just have to psyche the bugger out, as it were./ 

Had taken a long day in hell for training wheels; and no doubt, making an honest demon of the cad so as he could set a bit of a handle to his wild-side. All he had to do now was grab on tight to the link between himself and his love, and he could tug up the sot any old time he wanted. Convenient, if a bit slippery still, here and there.

He practiced as they flew, as he had little else to do but hang on and hope he didn’t dust.

It was kind of incredible to be able to make himself whole again whenever he wished. Made him all the more thunderstruck to be leaving his mate; now of all times. She who loved all of him, and had set him so inexplicably free. That moment, in the battle behind the Hyperion, with Buffy looking at him with shining eyes as if she were _proud_ of him, of all sodding things—as if she’d continue to be proud, either way—and telling him she wanted the fucking thing back, if he could find it…

That had been one of the most crystalline, incredible, and indescribable moments of his existence. He had thought nothing would ever beat it. Certainly nothing ever had before then, though it had had competition since. But in knowing that he not only had her permission but her _blessing;_ that she truly wanted him, whole and with no part of him bound away, was beyond any words he knew in any language to describe it. 

He hadn’t even known till that moment how much he himself had participated in keeping his wild half buried till he’d cut the bugger loose to sit up beside his poncy wee soul. Course, upon resumption of relations he found the sod wasn’t like he used to be anymore. Of course, he wouldn’t be the same happy-go-lucky demon he’d had once been, burdened as he was with the soul’s conscience and a lot of human-style inhibitions. There’d be a bit of negotiating every day on that rot, Spike supposed… but at least his demonic nature, held back before only by desperate, suicidal guilt from being the vicious, trammeled, angry thing it should have been at having been voluntarily bound, wasn’t resentful; nor yet angry. Wasn’t lashing out. It stretched happily at its having been freed; relaxed and mated and pleased as hell. 

And all this, only because Buffy wanted it. If his Slayer hadn’t been the one to say, ‘Come on back, then’, the sod would’ve stayed hidden, quavering in the dark, and never seen the low light of evening again.

Spike had thought that by going off to retrieve the bloody soul, the thing would eclipse his demon; as it had for Angelus. It had been, after all, what he’d wanted. Even the demon had wanted it by then; wanted to flay itself in obeisance for doing that which was unforgivable. He had offended the one to whom he had given his allegiance, wholly. He’d spilled blood and named it hers. Even if she had never claimed it, even if she left the leash of his being dragging in the dust and ever called it worthless as excrement… still it belonged to her. And then, against all the laws of his being, his kind… he had raised his hand to the one who owned him. 

If he must eclipse himself, destroy himself in penance, why not do as had been done to his grandsire? In the end, if he’d hurt her as badly. Why oughtn’t he?

But… the demon had remained; to beweep his outcast state, and trouble deaf heaven and all that rot. And he’d been able to find the sod, when needed, that once back in Sunnyhell. It had taken serious fucking effort, of course, to dig the bounder out and set him anything like up front even for a moment; even for the joy of combat. And yeah, the wanker had relished the moment, of course, as a chance to take out his sodding aggressions, but it had been as much an exercise in self-despite as anything, after which he’d immediately sunk again into misery and regret. If he’d ever been anything like a proper demon and not just a louder, more brash reflection of his old, nancy self, here was the proving moment.

All Spikey had ever really done was protest too sodding much.

One might think having the _soul_ had destroyed his ability to be a right demon, but no. That had happened long since. It was Buffy had done that. Loving Buffy. All the soul had done was help him to recognize everything. What he had done. What she had done. What they’d done to each other, and what they could have been if they’d had half a working fucking heart in between them. And all that in technicolor, without the roar of constant, inchoate, sensate information that drove the demon ever and impulsively on in search of belonging, of mated wholeness, of safety and home, and... 

/In the quiet of the soul lies madness, sometimes, Willie-boy./

Turned out… maybe the magick of the sodding cave and that bastard Lloyd wasn’t as set in stone as Lloyd himself. He’d thought he’d killed his inner bugger and could move on. Be what he’d thought Buffy wanted him to be; the antithesis of everything he’d striven to be for the greater part of his existence. Self-destruction as penance, since slow reformation hadn’t been the ticket, in the end. /But I didn’t destroy a sodding thing, did I, then? Just retreated like a bloody coward. As much a one as my bleedin’ grandsire…/ 

He’d always wondered if it was perhaps as much personal will as anything that bound Angelus beneath his poncy grandsire’s new persona. ‘Angel’ was a construct, no matter how heartily the git inhabited the thing by now. And anyway, Spike knew his sire-in-all-but-deed. Angel as he was now feared his demon; would help the soul fight to keep the sod under wraps. He was a personality built between the Scylla of his demon’s bound and starving, gnashing, many-headed rage, and the black-hole-pit, the Charybdis of his first life. Whatever ‘Angel’ was now, it was a man built on terror and guilt more than out of any positive attribute; a creature made out of so many ‘must nots’ rather than ‘I am’s. 

/Not that I’m much better. I know what it’s like to start building up a new identity from scratch, yeah? To look on _her_ and…/

Thing was, Spike had never thought the business with his own hard-won, chosen soul would be the same… but perhaps it was. Current evidence seemed in keeping with that hypothesis. /No sop to the ego to find out you’ve turned out so sodding much like your elder, after spending twenty years trying to live up to the prick, and then a hundred years trying to find your own bloody road./ But here he was; a composite of William Pratt and William the Bloody, collaborating to keep the latter submerged once the former had been brought into the limelight.

Until. 

Hell. Finding that Buffy did not hate that part of him had been a revelation in and of itself. That she loved the blighter enough not only to ask the demon back but to _mate_ him knowing full well what he was, call him up while they shagged, look at him the way she had… and then spend the day with him the way they had? Christ, she’d caressed him, touched him willingly in game face, comforted him when he was in pain while he was all-out be-demoned and acting a right vicious, impulsive wreck. 

And she’d been understanding about his shortcomings the entire fucking time.

What an impossible, unlooked-for gift. Whatever she had done to him in the last twenty-four hours had given him permission to do… something. He wasn’t sure what. Shake some yoke, slip some shackles inside himself since last night’s battle; to give over grimly toiling away in chains somewhere beneath the surface of his being with only the visage showing, as ever. 

Now it was as if he could prod that part of himself; call him up whenever he needed him. Collaborate, rather. It was a wonder. No more submersion out of some terrible sense of horror and regret. Perhaps that had been half the reason for all the quiet, there, for a bit. /Maybe given the divine grace of Buffy’s forgiveness—of her love, even—and then a sort of curative of reunion into my full being, the bastard’s been so overwrought, or so grateful to finally be able to rest or somesuch that it had had to have a nice little healing nap./

/Did you process, then? Alright, is it? Good on you; now stay awake, here on in, yeah? We’ve shite to do./ For one thing, he was honestly shocked to find that the dragon, with a bit of a squawk, had started to spiral down. And, upon a bit of inspection, a little mental adjustment for aerial perspective…

Hell. He definitely recognized the building it was honing in on. “You’re sodding joking!”

It was the Christing lawyers’ nest.

The dragon sort of back-winged into a gap in the necro-tinted glass somewhere at one of the wrecked upper floors. As it landed it smoothly ducked its shoulder so that he was, of all bloody things, dropped lightly to roll off of it; unfolded automatically out of the tuck-and-roll to come to rest in a gap between a set of offices and a stairway. Easy as you please. The beast then sat back and turned its head over its shoulder to start preening its wings like a creature congratulating itself on a job well done, and, just, what the fuck?

Shaking his head, Spike rubbed his shoulders where even a vamp’s muscles could get a bit tense from clinging for dear unlife to a bunch of spines for an hour or what-have-you while dodging about in midair, then pushed through into the demented hellscape version of Wolfram and Hart. He wished he still had his mace on hand. That’d be a helpful bit of something to hold onto right now. Thought of calling out to see if anyone was home, but that seemed a wankerish thing to do, considering what he might bring down on himself if the place wasn’t filled with friendlies. For instance, what if those Black Thorn pricks had left some of minions alive in here to joust with yours truly?

Wary and alert, he pushed through into the closest open space. It was littered with debris from what looked like a bloody earthquake; a broken column here, a fallen concrete buttress there. He stepped over a beam… and stopped dead. 

Some berk was lying in a crumpled heap on the floor in the middle of the vast room, in a circle of what looked like jars and books. The smell of blood was all about him, some fresh and some old. Occasionally the figure writhed a smidge, looking to be in quite a bit of agony. Interesting.

He didn’t recognize the person at first. /Draconic lunch, perhaps? And it invited me all the way back across the bleeding city to join in?/

Except… There was something oddly familiar about the smell of the busted-up sod. Familiar, if at the same time not. It bore investigation. 

He took a single step closer, drawn by his idiot curiosity. Really what he should be doing is leaving right quick, to head back to Buffy and his pulsers, but surely one swift glance wouldn’t hurt, yeah? /Came all this way./

A low, pained moan put paid to every thought of a swift departure, and sent a chill through him that would have stopped his heart if the thing hadn’t already quit beating a century and change back. 

That was, sod it all, a thoroughly familiar noise, and it brought an answering groan to his own lips. “Bloody Angel. What the hell happened to you?” 

No response, and why the hell hadn’t his grandsire felt him coming? 

Now then; for that matter, why hadn’t he felt Angel? He hadn’t felt the tingle in his short hairs that said ‘family’ at all, actually; nor yet that heavy weight the ponce always brought to bear on his being whenever he came near. “Oi! Prat! What’s got you so drained you can’t even get up?”

More writhing. 

With a grunt, Spike moved a bit closer to regard the broken mass that was his nest-sire, looked down to regard the man with interest. Ol’ Broodypants looked to be in a hell of a lot of pain, which, to be fair, was a bit of alright by him. “What’s goin’ on, Peaches? Why're you just lyin about?” He frowned then as he noted that Angel was actually, it seemed, pillowed on some sort of lightly-glowing cushion of what looked like magicks, an inch or two above the floor. 

He also looked thoroughly twisted up, and smelled of pungent herbs and spellwork. It drew a grunt from Spike. Christ, that offended the nose. And hell; why’d the prat's blood smell all off, like? “You just come over all floaty this morning? And anyway, what got its teeth in you?”

Angel groaned soundlessly at him. Twitched a little. Scrabbled with one hand at the broken and buckled floor. Even that movement caused him to exhale; a high whistle of sheer agony.

More interestingly, not one other bit of him moved a hair from where he lay crumpled just above the dusty surface like a ruin. 

Well, hell. “Don’t mind sayin’ you look bloody awful.”

His grandsire winced and let out a slow, gasping sort of breath. “I jumped… off a building. Broke… my back… my legs… Wrist.”

Spike grunted and bent over a little to inspect the git. “That’s unfortunate. Should take you, what? Couple of days to get over that?” He reconsidered then, remembering that bloody awful organ and those endless months bound to that fucking wheelchair. “Maybe longer, if there aren’t enough rats in this dimension…”

“Not… a vampire here. Human… again.”

It set Spike back on his heels with a nasty shock, though he didn’t precisely wish to betray how hard the news had struck him. /Well, that’s somewhat more unfortunate, yeah? And definitely unexpected./ Though, it did explain the hell of a lot. “What the bloody hell?”

“Don’t know. Maybe… Senior Partners… messing with me.”

Spike squatted on his boots, considering that. Answered the one great hovering question as to why Buffy had lost the feel of Angel’s bond the second they’d hit this dimension. Also explained his inability to sense his relative when he stepped into the room; not to mention the odd smell of the blood, the off-kilter scent of the sod’s all-too-human bod. All of it. /Huh./ “Well. Reckon it’s going to take you a helluva lot longer to heal, then.” 

Angel threw him a disgusted look through his anguish; one that said, essentially, ‘Oh, ya think?’

Something struck Spike then. A realization. “So, what? You sent the bleedin' dragon to fetch me to you? I’m guessing you two are fast friends or summat?”

“Been bringing me… food. Wes’ ghost is here. Got it to… bring up some… books to do… incantations. Help… some healing… spells. Searching for… specific one. Thought you could… bring it for me. Column of light and fire… Heal faster…” A pained wince. “Wes can’t… Incorporeal. Dragon can’t fit where…”

/Well, that’s a sucks for Wes./ “Know how that goes. Frustrating mess, comin’ over all spectral.” Spike frowned fitfully and gave in to plop down in full next to his fragrant wreck of a grandsire. /Christ./ “Since when are you best mates with the dragon? And Wes is a soddin’ ghost, then? Poor bugger.” Piss-poor bit of luck, that. God knew he remembered that bit of frustration. “Well. S’pose I can do that much for you before I push off. Since you took so much trouble an’ that, to invite me.” 

“Where…”

Spike hardened his voice, fought to keep his equanimity. He didn’t feature leaving family like this, precisely… but he had responsibilities, damnitall! “Got pulsers to care for, innit? Whole bleedin’ flock of ‘em in Beverly Hills. Buffy’s got ‘em in hand, and the Smurf can help long as she’s in fine fettle, but don’t mind sayin’ I don’t wanna be gone long…” /'Specially considering the last bit's questionable at best of late./

Peaches’ face twisted, agony huffing out of on one truncated breath. “Just… Help Wes.”

Spike sighed and stuffed down his impatience, the feeling of anxiety tugging on him through the bond that said Buffy was losing her damn mind and needed him. “Yeah. Sure.” He pushed himself up with palms to thighs. “Where is the blighter, anyway?”

Turned out Wes was down in the bowels of the building, poking about in some file or other with hands that went right through everything. Poor ghostly git. “Oi. See you’ve taken a turn at the incorporeal. Rum go.” 

Wes turned to face him. It gave Spike a bit of a start right off, seeing as how the lad looked nothing like he ought, what with the nancy, downy cheeks, and the suit and tie bit. “What the bloody hell happened to you, then?”

“Long story. Good to see you, Spike.”

Spike squinted at the wraith. “This some sort of idiot ‘residual self-image’ shite?”

That sparked something familiar from the man, finally. A little sideways half-smile from the ghosty bloke in the specs and the rest. “Might have been, I’d imagine, a few years back, but no. Not anymore. No, this is because the Senior Partners deemed me a turncoat-in-waiting. Bit hacked off at me, I’m afraid, for what I fully intend on being; which is, as you’ve no doubt guessed, a thorn in Their sides as much as possible, for all that I’ve a contract says I belong to them for eternity.”

“Christ, man, I’m that sorry.” What a bloody bitch of a way to spend your afterlife; working for the pricks against whom you’d spent your human life fighting.

Wes shrugged it off as if it were nothing at all that dire. “Yes, well. Be that as it may, best to get on with it. Angel sent you down to help bring up what’s needful, I’d imagine?”

Spike stuffed the pity. Man didn’t want it, far be it from him to hand it out. After all, someday he’d dust and be sent to hell, locked away from his Slayer for all eternity, and have to be happy knowing she was harping away up in heaven. And damn right. /We make the best of the time we have, and sod the rest./ “Yeah. Somethin’ about a book and a spell and fire and light and healing and a load of other rubbish.”

“We have high hopes; though it might take a rather long time.”

Spike nodded as he stepped in close to the ghost, pulled the drawer out a little further. The file they were in was listed as ‘H’. For ‘Healing’, he supposed. “Weeks, is it?”

“Months, more like. If at all. He’s lucky he didn’t die right off. Most do, with injuries like that and no hospital available. What we’ve done so far has kept the gangrene off. He’s been doing meditations, talking to Cordelia to keep the pain and shock from shutting down his system…”

“The bird who died in the coma a bit ago, innit? Vision-girl?”

Something crossed Wes’ ghostly features, tightening up his face. “Yes, precisely.”

“Hm.” He’d long suspected his git of a grandsire had had a bit of an affair with that one, though he kept his mouth shut about it. Sod thought it was fine to string Buffy along for years, was it, while he moved on to someone he loved enough to talk to her in the extremity of mortal agony, but sure. /No skin off mine that you thought to keep Buffy for yourself, and no one else ought ever to get a crack at her. Hell; how you still thought you could read our girl the riot act at every turn for having chosen to pick up the pieces and get on with it with yours truly is beyond me./ 

It rather tore him in two, truth be told. But that was a normal state of affairs, to be stuck somewhere between massive resentment and family loyalty, when it came to his asshole of a progenitor. /You always were a prat, Angel, whatever you like to call yourself./

For all he ultimately owed his demonic existence and a hundred-plus years to Angel, Spike found himself feeling quite a bit less charitable toward his elder at mo', and hardened his tones. “Alright, Wes. What am I looking for? I wanna get this spell for the poof and get the bloody hell out of here. I’ve got Buffy and a whole troop of defenseless humanity to see to. And Illyria; remember her? Got a lot more people dependin’ on me than just Angel, so let’s get a bloody move on.”

Wes eyed him sadly for a moment, then nodded. “Right. Look for a card that says _‘bhA RjIka sandhAna’.”_

“Sanskrit, is it?”

That earned him a startled look; one which faded quickly into something assessing. “Yes, it is. Well done.”

Spike grunted, but volunteered nothing further as he went about shuffling through the file.

***

**S: **  
  
“Well, looks like you have things well in hand, then.” Spike laid the broken balusters and the book beside his crumpled grandsire, next to the jars and things he’d brought up. Splints, the former would be, for the legs. He’d torn them from a nearby stair what was made of wood and not metal. The book… Well. That was a bit more outside his ken. /I’m no sodding magician./ 

He made quick work of the splinting, ignoring the git’s moaning and groaning as he jerked the limbs roughly straight. He was nice enough not to jar the spine, could he manage it, since he didn’t want to cause permanent damage—human and that, so he wouldn’t want the prat to end up wheelchair-bound for life—but frustration made it tough to keep his movements gentle. 

When it was over he pushed away from the sweating, feverish form to nod at the hovering ghostie. Stepped back, dusting his hands, and did his best to harden his heart. “Have someone to do your magicks for you. Got willing hands, if a bit dragonish… And I’ve got a party to get back to. Lot of scared humans looking to me to keep them alive, so if you don’t mind…”

“Need you. Can’t protect myself… here.”

His temper flared. Was the big, stupid-haired poofter _serious?_ “What do you want me to do about it? Cart you back with me? You’re a bloody liability, and you can barely move without dying!”

“Need you to… stay. Dragon’s good… protection, but need… help till… I can heal.”

/Oh for fuck’s sake./ “Look, much as I’d love to coddle you, Peaches, I have things to do. I have people depending on me, yeah?” He worked up a sneer, fighting down the guilty feeling that he’d be abandoning his nest-sire. It was all blood-guilt anyway; a magickally-induced loyalty, and he didn’t have to obey it anymore, did he? For the first time in his sodding unlife, he didn’t have to do something Angel wanted him to do. He had the freedom to tell the bastard to piss off. And yeah. He supposed he could stay and help, for old times’ sake… but this wasn’t an emergency, and he had one waiting. 

Besides; to his mind, the rotter deserved a bit of pain, what he’d done to Spike through his long life, and for bringing them all here. For the way he’d gloated and chuckled over the time in the wheelchair, and feeding and fucking Dru in front of Spike while he half-starved, waiting for them to maybe remember to let him nosh a bit on the gone-over leftovers. For what the git had done to Buffy when she was just a girl, and kept _on_ doing, right until practically bloody yesterday. /Hell; you never even had the grace to stop when you fell for someone else, you nit! You left it to some other vamp to free her! If you ever loved her, you’d’ve spoken the words and let her go! Fucking sod! But you wanted to hang onto her like a buggerin’ insurance policy, didn’t you? Didn’t care what it did to her, what it did to me—course you didn’t, just like with Dru—what it did to _us!_ You just kept on; and now you want me to _stay_ with you?/ 

For that, most of all, the ponce deserved what came to him. For hurting Buffy. For crippling her, emotionally, starting when she’d been scarce out of nappies, for Chrissakes, so that they’d all had to pay, in the end. “Like Buffy. You remember Buffy? Bird you claim to love; the one you dragged me away from with your pet dragon so you could snooker me down here to watch you wriggle around on the floor like a toothless ponce?”

Angel sort of winced. “Buffy can… take care of… herself.”

Was he for real? “Yeah, a’ course she can, but if you hadn’t noticed, this is a bleedin’ hell-dimension. The regular rules are a bit off; and I left her in a right precarious situation! Not sure why you’d even call me away from her, leave her in the lurch like that…” Belatedly he saw the shifty look in the git’s eyes, grimaced in recognition. /Oh, you cagey bastard./ 

All guilt, all vestiges of regret fled in a new flood of rage; one so strong he had to fight himself back, for just one very brief instant, from the demon’s urge to strike. To end this one’s life, who had indirectly threatened his mate; just put the fucker out of his misery and call it a sodding mercy-killing or some shite. 

He stuffed the impulse with serious effort. It was a near thing, though, for a moment, now his demon-side was wakeful. Lucky for Angel he’d spent years now keeping control of that part of himself for Buffy’s sake; because that was all that was holding him back in this moment.

Buffy wouldn’t want him to kill the prat. That was the only thing stayed his hand. “Right. I get it. Wanted to get me away from her, was it?”

Dead silence. 

Wes’ voice broke the stalemate, echoing hollowly throughout the room. “Angel?” The wraith sounded fairly alarmed. 

Both current and ex-vampires ignored the spook, locked in a combat of wills. Angel’s eyes were focused, dark and intent on Spike’s. “Not that. Need… your help…”

Soul or no, his grandsire was still an utter cad. And Spike, like Buffy, was well shut of the bastard. 

/I’ve nothing holding me here. I owe him _nothing_./

The glory of having that brutal weight of disappointment lifted was like a sodding choir singing. To feel it gone, that once-yearned-for need for approval, too long become a yoke and mixed with dread, with pain, now vanished. 

He’d stayed long enough, before. Fought the fight. He was done. He had other loyalties. And his blood… It was no longer bound to this fucker. /You’re human now. You’ve no bleedin’ hold over me./ “Well, she needs me too, so I’ve got to go. Best of luck, Grandad.”

Angel looked alarmed now that his ploy was falling apart before his eyes. “…Can’t just… leave me like… this!”

/Oho!/ “You just bet I can, Peaches. Like you left Dru, and me to care for her when I was scarce more than a sodding fledge.” The arse had the grace to wince. “Like you left me to swim for it during the war, yeah?” /Because you could, innit? The blood doesn’t go both ways, so you felt no responsibility for me, for Dru. None for Lawson… Well, now I feel sod all for you. Fare thee bloody well./

“That was… different. No soul, then.”

His old irritation flared into a conflagration. “That’s a load of codswallop. You didn’t do it because I was a soulless killer and you know it. Nor her. You only did it because you couldn’t look on her without knowing what you’d done to her… and with me, because you just didn’t like me. Never had. I was a burden, and on top of it you didn’t like that I was a mirror; a mirror to remind you of what you’d created. What you used to be. You wanted me to dust so you didn’t have to remember what you’d been for all those years.” It caught in his throat, hardened. Made his loyalties entirely clear. “What you did to me, to Dru; to all of us.”

Pushing himself to his feet, he shot a quick nod at the specter. “Look; done what I could, for Buffy’s sake…” /And I guess for my own worthless fucking conscience. Didn’t even kill the bastard./ “Left you set for a while, yeah? Lot of food close by. Supplies and the like. Your healing spells and that; legs all set right. Not sure what else you want from me.” Turned his eyes to the broken heap on the floor. “But that’s where we end, Angel; and know I only did it because she’d hate me if I didn’t.” /Even then, more’n I should’ve done for you, you prick. Should kill you. Should…/ He bit down hard on the instinct, tasted blood in his mouth. “Any road, between that and the dragon and your sodding ghost, you should do alright.” He ignored the pitiful gurgles coming from the disaster that was his sire’s sire, steeled his undead heart. “But I’m not stayin’.” /I don’t owe you this./ “It’ll take time I don’t have. Already have done. I have my own responsibilities… and you’re not it.”

He turned away. “You’re a big boy, Angel. It’s time you grow up and learn to lie in the bed you make.”

***  
  
  
  
You know, I try to be broad-minded and write Angel-sympathetic stuff, but the older I get, the less patience I have for his shenanigans, and the more I just... can't.  
He's a great sodding git.  
I firmly stand by that statement, and will till the end of time.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got a little longer than I expected after last-minute edits. More POV-switching... which will continue to be the case till I get our babies reunited. 
> 
> Don't hate me that they're not yet? I swear there are reasons.

**B:**

She was getting closer. She could _feel_ it. And the closer she got to Spike, the more… well, hot and bothered the link between them seemed to get; heavy with a feeling of anticipation, or expectation, or just a feeling of something striving toward _completion_.

Buffy recognized that feeling, now and with context, from her early days with Angel. How hard it had been to be apart from him, and how much better, more _right_ it had felt whenever they had been close. Near. Especially _touching_. Like he had been her missing piece, somehow. 

/It would have been nice if you’d told me _why_/ she thought grimly as she crept and darted from building to building, fighting her way ever closer to Downtown and her goal. 

She was maybe a few blocks from where they’d started their journey at the beginning of this interminable day—God, she needed sleep—when she saw the dragon; squawking and flapping as it curvetted around midair above a very recognizable, weirdly-shaped and glassy structure in the middle of a cluster of others about a half-mile ahead of her. The building, with its laid-back steps-levels, clay-buff coloration, and metro-black-tinted glass, was distinctive as hell. /Oh, you’re kidding me! Of _course_ a dragon would make that place its nest!/

The giant beast seemed to be quartering the ground below the building as if in search of something, but then, oddly, it halted mid-search to hover briefly. Swung around to key in very directly on Buffy’s approach-vector—Buffy could swear in that instant that the thing had smelled her somehow—and it gave a loud squawk and promptly fluttered in through what looked to be a big, broken gap the windows of one of the upper floors.

/Well, crap. I guess I’ve been announced to… whoever./ 

At least she knew who had taken Spike, and who the damn dragon served. God alone knew what these Senior Partners guys were doing to him down there, but it at least gave her greater certitude that she was on the right track, and a burst of energy to help her to push on for the last gasp. Nothing like a nice shot of adrenaline to drive one on at the end of the hell of a long day, because, dammit; even Slayers got tired sometimes. 

Upon reaching the vast edifice she immediately started up; a slow but steady job without elevators. Moved warily as she did so, since god only knew what else was living in this place, eyes and ears and every other sense wide open for possible ambush and focused almost wholly on the task of staying alive in an enemy lair. What with all the concentration and the effort on top of the heat and the near-dehydration—Hell, Buffy had long since decided, could really use some air conditioning—it was probably not surprising that she missed it at first, though later on she would be thoroughly pissed off at herself for even this rookie mistake. But to be fair, she was new at this; at the using of a bond with a vampire for a sort of… echolocation. 

To be honest, though, she was just putting one foot in front of the other by that point, and probably on her last stair-climbing legs when, upon gaining some ridiculously high floor… something shifted, breaking her failing concentration. Her awareness of her surroundings splintered, and she swung around like a compass needle, thrown off her game.

The pull inside her told her that Spike was now _behind_ her. /Okay, that doesn’t make any _sense!_/

She started back the way she had come, cursing inwardly, but was held back by a low, pained moan drifting down a hallway on the other side of the stairwell door. An utterly familiar one. 

“Angel?”

“Cor…delia, can you… come back and… push that book… closer to my hand? Please… I can’t…” 

The agony in his voice dragged her on, and, what the hell? _Cordelia?_

When she pushed through the door, she saw him right away. Across the vast open space littered with earthquake debris; just another broken heap on the floor. So broken in fact that at first she thought he was just a pile of old clothes, till she saw a pale flash of face, an untidy, dusty mop of brown hair. “Oh my God; _Angel!”_

“Buffy?”

Exhaustion forgotten, Buffy crossed the intervening space in seconds to fall to her knees beside him. Reached out… and pulled back when he winced in anticipation of her touch. “Angel, what _happened_ to you?”

“That’s… a long story.” He tried a little smile, but the agony in his eyes made the attempt a miserable failure. “Let’s just say… I tried something… and it didn’t… work out.”

She scanned his body. He had splints on his legs; ones that looked like they’d been torn from the railing of a stairway. A stack of books around him with titles like, ‘Ye Eldest Healing Artes’. Some containers of food, and a few wrappers. She had never seen him look so unbelievably pale…

She reached out again, more gently, and very lightly touched his face. And only then realized, when she felt his warmish, clammy skin, something—or rather a distinct _lack_ of something—that had registered at the back of her mind since she had entered the room, but of which she had not fully been aware until this very instant.

Angel was not a vampire right now.

He was completely and utterly human.

***

**B:**  
  
“I’m telling… you, you’ll get… yourself killed if… you try to catch… him now. You’ve been… on the go… for hours. Exhausted. Need… to stay where… there’s cover and… food for a… while and you’re… safe. Get some rest. Then maybe… you can take… the dragon…”

“You mean _‘Cordelia’?”_ Buffy asked archly. She hated that he was in such anguish, of course, but did he really have to name his winged demon pet after her high school rival?

“I was having… fever dreams… about her… and it thought… I was talking… to it. Thought that was… its name. It… stuck.”

She was thoroughly torn. She was, admittedly, dying for a catnap. The idea of trekking back across that hellish eleven or whatever miles for a third time under that blistering, endless sun while the screams of the pursued and the dying echoed around her gave her a truly harsh wiggins, and as for hitching a ride? Well. She sort of got the feeling that Cordelia the dragon wasn’t going to leave Angel’s side without his express command. It was over there in a nearby office right now—one with a broken window to provide egress—looking in on him through a crazily-hanging, broken set of double doors with a sort of moony, worshipful expression, like some kind of giant, dopey Labrador that was too big to be a lapdog but really, _really_ wanted to try it out anyway.   
  
“Alright. I’ll stay with you for a little bit. Try to help get you comfortable. Maybe we can even figure out a spell to transport you to where we’ve set up camp in Beverly Hills without killing you. But at some point I’m gonna have to head back to check on Spike; before I lose track of where the group is headed.” She frowned fitfully at him, irritated by the whole damn thing. “I just wish we would’ve known you were here. We could’ve forted up here instead of making that stupid trek halfway across the city…”

“Good idea… making for high… ground,” he commended her spur-of-the-moment thought. 

“Yeah, well…” She pulled at her lip for a moment. “Now we’re all spread too thin.” /And God, I already miss my guy./ It was stupid how much. It was like a pulse-beat in her head, in her body. She could _feel_ him, somewhere off to her left in the direction of Beverly Hills; a pulse-beat made up of unwonted distance and a strange urgency that was eleven parts of concern and one part a faint sense of general _wrongness, _like it was just incorrect to be so far from him. It was a super-physical feeling, too; one that said that when she found him again she should close the distance between them in the—ahem—most physical way possible, in the swiftest manner available, and that foreplay was not strictly required. Which was… Well. Not anything to which she was entirely opposed, since she’d basically been horny as hell ever since he’d bitten her, but the way the feeling entwined with that sense of deep, pulling, attenuated connection was just _strange_.

Damn, this blood-bond thing was weird. And it super-highlighted for Buffy how much she had always, previously, been linked to Angel. Helped to identify for her, in retrospect, all the ways in which she had once felt wrong when he was gone. /Was there some kind of hold over me even before he bit me? I felt connected to him even then./ She had been left mentally and emotionally wrecked when Angel had been in denial of said connection as Angelus, and when he had been torn away from her to exist in a hell dimension; all things that had occurred long before he had ever bitten her. Devastated and depressed when he’d broken up with her, told her that it wasn’t going to happen, on a very deep level, and could all of that have been about childish dreams going unfulfilled? Had there been some other connection, before the blood?

Well, maybe she could lay all that at the feet of her demon-side. Now she was done denying that part of herself… /It’s time I admit that that part of me that really needs that monster, the part of me that’s so freaking happy right now? I guess maybe that part of me… wanted Angel as a mate, or whatever? Imprinted on him first or some damn thing./ To be fair, he’d been right _there_ when she’d been, in effect, ‘born again’ into her full power. /So maybe when it didn’t work out that part of me got all mopey?/

It would make a sort of sense, she supposed. She had only just been reawakened from her first death when she had gone from ‘oh, mysterious bad-boy, mmm-cute’ to ‘holyfuck I want him, I need to put him in my mouth’… which had been, one, frighteningly overwhelming for her young, sixteen-year-old mind, the way all those young, Slayer-y urges had gotten all mad-fixated on Angel, and the way he fought, and the way he… Well. /Looking for a matchy partner, much?/ Two, it had probably been the most utterly visceral experience of her life. No wonder she’d just gone with it, flipped to total instinct. And, no wonder it had made an impression she hadn’t been able to eschew for so damn long.   
  
Compound all that with a long-untended blood-link, attenuated by space and time, and…

It would explain a hell of a lot. The indelible draw, the utter, bone-deep betrayal when his demon had cast her aside; much more painful and lingering an agony than merely the fading sting of a deflowering gone wrong. /God, which side of me was more in love with you?/

Anyway, it had definitely been different ever since he had gone to live in LA. She had been left confused and torn ever since; like a piece of her had been missing. 

Either way, her thing with Angel had never felt quite like her bond with Spike. Angel had been more… oddly dark and cerebral, and weirdly filled with strains of guilt. This felt… vital and physical and powerful and dynamic as it thrummed through her, demanding her attention and her attendance, and…

/And I can’t _come_ to you right now. And you know what? I kind of resent that I feel so dragged around by all these damn vampires!/ But that was kind of an infantile reaction, and she knew it, since at least this time around she’d chosen the stupid thing. /Anyway, there’s nothing you can do about it in this particular instant, so deal, Buffy./ She shook her head briskly. “He’s there and we’re here. It’s lame, but it is what it is.” She moved to start looking through Angel’s mess of magickal texts and food garbage, apparently largely fetched to him by the dragon and directed by some unnamed Wolfram and Hart ghost (because sure, why not), and, later, by Spike (it still burned that she had just missed him by like a half-hour or something). “What happened to that Gunn guy, anyway?”

Angel winced mightily for about the fifth time in the last twenty minutes. “He got… dragged away from… me right when… we got here. Blood everywhere. Think… it attracted vamps. Don’t know…” He subsided, but it was clear that he didn’t think much of his long-time associate’s chances.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, laying a hand with extreme gentleness on Angel’s shoulder; the one part of him that had, miraculously, survived being shattered by his leap from a tall building. /Stupid idiot, trying to literally be Superman./

Angel gave the impression of a person who was shaking his head to dismiss something, though he did not move. “Get… some sleep. Look like… you need it.”

She snorted out a laugh. “Look who’s talking.” 

“Haven’t… slept since… accident. Hurts too much. Go ahead. Be okay.”

She frowned at him. “You okay with what you just ate?” It had hurt to watch him eat; the anguish that it had clearly caused him, even, to swallow. And, yeah, Spike had apparently straightened out the legs before he’d left, which was nice of him, and Buffy had been able to find some instructions in the spellbooks lying around to mix up and smear some weird salves on some of Angel’s other wounds. She had even managed to chant an incantation that seemed to be helping him a little, though she was no Willow; but this was just really awful. 

Buffy hated to think of him just laying here like this, suffering, while she went off to sleep, and… /Oh, man./ He was human now. He’d need to, like, pee and stuff, wouldn’t he? 

Okay, she was so not that intimate with Angel anymore. If she ever had been, which was doubtful. “What about when you, um, need to…” She did her own little bit of wincing. “You know… go?”

He shot her a wry look and twitched his fingers at a book next to him. “Been a while… but already thought… of that earlier. Got a spell here… for that… too, courtesy of… Wes. Be all… right.”

Well, wow. There was literally a spell for everything! Talk about full service! 

/Wait./ “Did you say ‘Wes’?”

Another regretful sort of flinch. “He’s a ghost. Bound to… the building, I think? Helping.”

/Oh man, that’s so awful and weird and…/ Buffy darted glances around her, feeling unnerved. “Where is he?” 

Angel frowned a little. “I think… he’s avoiding you?”

“Um, okay. I know I smell bad right now, but you’d think a ghost wouldn’t…”

Despite his clear agony, his lips twitched in faint amusement. “Something about… trouble if he… came too close… to you. Seemed… worried that… you were here.”

Buffy had no idea what to make of that. “Um, okay?”

“No clue.”

Well, it would really suck to chat with the ghost of a person she might have saved if she had made other choices, anyway, so… “Okay, well, um, glad you asked him and not me, to help you with...” She waved a hand vaguely. “So, I guess I’ll just, um…”

Angel sort of grunted at her, eyes looking inward. Probably trying to control the pain.

She patted his shoulder again. “I’ll be close,” she whispered, and moved away across the buckled, broken tiles of the shattered office to the nearest padded bench-thing, where, with a grateful sigh, she curled up with her back to the wall facing her broken ex and, despite the urgency of the pulling inside her, fell almost immediately into an exhausted slumber.

***

**S:**  
  
“What do you _mean_, she’s gone?”

“What I said. She took off after you, Boss. She’s been gone since right after you left.”

Cursing madly, Spike whirled and stared out over the terrain he had just covered. A’ course, the prat was right. He could feel her; away that way. Had thought he could, as he’d left, but he’d dismissed it. Not before him but abruptly behind him, and what the _bloody_ fuck was his problem, that he hadn’t listened to his blood? /Just because you’ve never bonded anyone before doesn’t mean you don’t know how to pay sodding _attention!_/ 

Inside him, his demon, once more wide fucking awake, growled, shifting restlessly near the surface. Which it had been doing since he’d started to feel Buffy too close… then too far off again. 

His buggering instincts had been trying to _tell_ him all the way back that his mate was near. That he had been moving away from her, but he had been so _certain; _and why the fuck _had_ he been? It was _Buffy, _of course she’d do exactly fucking this! Only he’d told himself she’d do ‘the responsible thing’ and stay with the people they’d gathered, because she was a leader, when… /Fuck./ When they’d only just bonded, and… /Christ, she’s said nothing since she’s come to this sodding city but that she’s binned everything else for your worthless arse, Spike! She’s got nothing left at this point; given it all over in trade for you. Her Slayers, her shite friends—Christing _Dawn!_—and you thought she was going to tamely stay behind and do ‘the right thing’, the leaderly thing like she once would have? Jesus fuck, Spike, where’s your head?/

She’d _told_ him. More than once; that she wasn’t going to lose him again. And he’d been so sodding used to her doing the noble thing, the right bloody thing, that he’d ignored it. Hadn’t taken it seriously. After all, it was _him_. And it was her. And he was still incapable of believing that Buffy Summers—both the Slayer and the woman—would chuck it all in, identity and Calling and the rest… for _him_. Not with everything. Would never have thought in a million bloody years that she would have…

/_And_ you’ve gotten too bleeding used to not bein’ able to access your demon, m’lad. Gotten used to ignoring your instincts. And look what it’s got you. Git./ “She just marched off out into _that_ without any kit or anything?” He still prayed it was some sort of lie, somehow; a bad joke, or…

“Yeah, she told us to obey the blue woman and then she bailed.” Johns sounded like he was half-afraid Spike was going to blame him. 

Not ruddy likely, though. Wasn’t that blighter’s fault. Fool couldn’t have stopped Buffy if he’d tried. Half-dead she could have cracked him in threes and done whatever the hell she’d wanted.

/And apparently what she wanted was you. Enough to go sodding traipsing off into _that_, on her own, with not a supply one. Like a bleeding idjit…/

Christ she was admirable. And she really did love him. It was enough to drive him to his knees. Made him want to sob like a fucking prat, but there was no time for that. 

/Sodding _think_, Spike! Use your bleeding head for once!/ Usually the Slayer had a plan. What would she have... 

Hell. Usually she worked with a _team_. Except… here and now, he _was_ her team. And she had always come for him. So of course she had gone after him. And he wished to fuck he didn’t feel so warmed by that as he did, because she might just have gone and gotten herself fucking slaughtered for her pains. 

Except she hadn’t yet. The blood-bond was still active, thick as an umbilicus between them and throbbing with life. 

He followed it, desperately, blindly, hand-over-hand in the dark, and… She was resting now, actually, which he didn’t think she’d allow herself to do if she wasn’t safe. It felt… heartening. Kept him from going mad, wondering if she was alright. Kept him from dashing right off after her in that exact instant, like they were on some sort of mad carousel, chasing one another back and forth across the sodding city, over and over again. 

Which was well enough, since it seemed he had another fucking fire to put out right now. “And Illyria’s switched how many times since I was gone?”

“You mean to the other girl? The little wisp of a thing who just says ‘no’ and holds her head in her hands like she’s nuts?” Johns looked frustrated to have been saddled with Fred/Illyria, and in all honesty, Spike couldn’t blame the sod. In the absence of anyone in the know and considering that his previous knowledge of things supernatural had been, before the endlessness that was today, fuck all, Jerry here was doing a bang-up job of keeping everyone together and holding his own ass on the line. 

He might actually do for a lieutenant, given all that. “Yeah, her.”

“Three.” Johns grimaced. “She’s back to doing that crap, actually. Been there for the last coupla hours. Also, she did some weird thing the last time where I think she made us…” The pulser winced and shuddered, and an abrupt smell of fear washed over the nearby area, strong and vital. “I swear. It sounds nuts, but for a sec I swear to God we all went… back in time. I was sitting with my girl in her place in SD, eating pizza and watching TV, and then we were back here. And then I was…” He trembled again, looking all wild-eyed. “I think I was dead, okay?” He looked absolutely haunted at that, and the fear-smell dialed up to about a ten on the Richter-scale of edible humanity. Spike did his best not to flare his nostrils. Good bloody thing he was used to humans smelling of terror around him and not taking a nip, and that his sodding stomach was full at the moment. “Everyone’s staying the hell away from her, man, I’ll tell you that much.”

Spike scrubbed his hand through his hair for a mo’, feeling the frustration of it all mount in him. /Never wanted to be a bloody leader. Didn’t ask for this. That’s Buffy’s job./ “What’d you do before this, Jerry?” He had to find a way to distract the bloke before he sodding fell apart. 

The tired-looking pulser shrugged, clearly too wiped to care anymore what happened, even if it was strange as hell, as long as he had some orders to follow. “It’s Jeremy. I was headed out to propose to my girlfriend when all this went down...” 

/Poor sod./ “No, I mean what did you do? Have any military training or summat? You’re right enough at organizing.”

Johns wearily rolled his head on his neck. “Did some JROTC. Never joined up though. Took organizational studies at UCLA, junior management at an office called Griffon and Associates. Do some mixed martial arts…”

Basically just your standard pulser. But somehow it was working for him here in the wild, wild hell. “Well, whatever you’re doin’, Jerry, keep doing it.”

“Appreciate that, Boss.” Squaring his shoulders, he turned and headed back to their little bivouac, now secreted beneath the eaves of a defunct public restroom that sported a little copse of skeletal “trees” around its southern edge. Most of Spike’s flock of nutters were sprawled under the tangle of naked limbs there, striving to find shade or someplace to hide, feel less naked. 

Illyria was there among them, though she had a decent bit of space all to herself and Wes’ all-too-fragrant body. She was currently in her Fred guise, and rocking as she stared down at the corpse, like seeing it was the worst horror she could imagine. Her keening, monotonous wail of “…Nonononono…” could be heard drifting out from under the branches even from where he stood at the other end of the structure. /I need to start keeping her away from the humans/ he decided. /Try to distract her so she can keep hold of herself. And I need to find a way to get rid of that goddamned corpse in case that’s what’s setting her the fuck off./ Though how he was going to manage the former and still keep tabs on the pulsers was a hell of a question. /Maybe get some of ‘em to make a run to scavenge for food and water. Though, that would either mean leaving Illyria behind, addled an’ thinkin’ she’s Fred, or sending the flock off to their bloody doom, sans protection. Hell. Need to split my sodding self in two, yeah?/ 

It was going to be the hell of a trick hiding the cadaver, if every time he did so Illyria made her reappearance and then kept toddling off to grab the thing again. Probably she could sniff it out wherever they might think to stash it. God knew _he_ could, much as he’d rather not. Thing was bloating long since, likely to burst like an overripe tomato at any moment, and he sure the bloody hell didn’t want to be nearby when it happened. 

/Fuck, how am I going to manage all this and still figure out how to communicate with Buffy, get her back? I don’t need this headache! This lot needs a _real_ sodding leader, not my worthless arse!/

Answer was most likely that he must needs wait for the Slayer to come back in her own time. Meantime, Christ, he could use an assistant or something. Probably he was going to have to rely on this Johns bloke, for lack of anyone better.

“Oi; Jerry,” he called, moving a little closer to the screen of useless brush, “we should get the group moving.” They needed some place to hide, get the worst-off ones out of the heat somewhat, make up an HQ. Then maybe once the poor fools were out of sight he could organize some sort of looting party with the few as were in decent enough shape for the exercise. “Maybe find a building we can use to fort up…”

He was interrupted by the roar of a truck, and swung around in time to see a tricked out vehicle heading straight for them, full of whooping women. And by the smell of them, not a one was wholly human.

“Scatter!” he roared, and let his demon slip gloriously free.

***

**B:**  


“The problem with most of these healing spells is, they’re in some kind of demon language. You get, like, ‘ye healinge spelle to mende ye broken thinge’… and then the spell you actually need is in a bunch of symbols no one could ever possibly read. And even if you _could,”_ Buffy went on, exasperation peaking, “it would probably all be a bunch of growls and mumbles and stuff that I couldn’t even _say! _And we all know what happens if you say a spell wrong! I could turn you into a broken-backed toad…” She threw the book down in disgust. “Or, you know, it could just do _nothing_. Like the last five did.”

It was her fourth day here. _Regular_ day, by her count. Though, the days here in this literal hell were a lot longer. There had finally been a night. Sort of. Finally. After about two and a half days worth of day. 

Seriously.

Not that it had made it any cooler. No wonder people went on and on about hell being all hot and burn-y.

It also really sucked that there was no running water. Though, at least there were toilets in this building. If she never again had to hunker down behind a Dumpster like an urban camper and hunt for lightly-used McDonalds bags for TP, it would be a good day, whatever kind of sludge came up when you flushed in this nasty-ass dimension. For one thing, paper bags, not so much with the comfortable. For another, neither was knowing your guy was guarding the alleyway and pretending he couldn’t hear what was going on like a total gentleman—and when had she ever thought of Spike and that word in the same sentence?—and, just, ugh.

The no lights thing, she could handle. Apparently whatever power stations supplied the city hadn’t come with them, or at least not all of them. Or maybe they couldn’t run without people on the job? Anyway, maybe some parts of town had power, but not this one.   
  
Of course, that wasn’t such a big deal when it was light out for like ever… but she could truly use some climate-control. And, like, a microwave. This building had about fifty vending machines and a couple breakrooms on every floor, with fridges full of slowly-dying snack food. She and Angel hadn’t starved yet, but at some point, scavenging was going to be a thing. Like, outside of the building. /Talk about putting your ‘feeding the Potentials’ lessons to good use./

She had learned to loot, back in those awful final days in deserted Sunnydale. Her hard lines about stealing and starvation? Kind of blurry these days. 

Meanwhile, hell could seriously be improved with a nice meal and a bath. Just changing clothes into whatever ugly-ass suit-blouse-pinstripe thing she could scrounge in this place that remotely fit… so not the same as actually getting clean. And, for the record, as far as she could tell, the ratio of female lawyers to male in this jerkoff place seemed to have been about twenty-to-one. The clothing options in the building were therefore severely limited. 

She had half a mind to go looting just for a better-fitting wardrobe.

“Here, let me… see it.” 

Buffy looked pointedly at the prostrate Angel over the top of the heavy book. He couldn’t even lift his own arms right now, much less hold up a huge, heavy book like one of these things.

“You can… hold it for me. No offense… but you were… always less research… oriented than… the rest of… the group.”

/Okay, you know what? When you last worked with us I was in high school. You have no _idea_ what I’ve been doing!/ Granted she still wasn’t Ancient Sumerian girl, but she was better with chipping in with the research than she used to be. She’d had to be, what with Giles leaving and stuff. /I’ve even been to _college!_/

But, if only to humor him, she handed the book over. Even held it for him, since she had long since given up trying to keep her distance from him out of the self-conscious concern that she, well… Okay. Smelled like a whole lot of sex and sweat and blood, and just basically stank. Between the fact that he was human now and gratefully didn’t have a vampire’s overly-sensitive sense of smell anymore, and the fact that there wasn’t really much she could do about it at this point, if he was bugged by the stench of her he was just going to have to live with it. She was pretty much all he had.

Maybe she could figure out how to whip up a sponge bath. Not that it wouldn’t be crazy-profligate to waste the water-bottles Wolfram and Hart had in storage, all neatly labeled for ‘Earthquake Preparedness’. /No, probably a bad plan./ 

Hm. /Maybe there’s a spell in one of these paint-by-numbers Wolfram and Hart spellbooks to conjure up a shower or something./ 

She had honestly never heard of spells that could be done by any chump, regardless of magickal ability, but apparently the nasty lawyers’ guild had a whole trade in these beginner-type, preset spells where the magick was half-loaded into the ink or something, so they worked just by reading them off the page. Something about how since everyone who had worked in the place had had to sign everything in blood and spy on each other with magicks and whatever, they had hired a bunch of mages and sorcerers to come up with a bunch of chintzy, easy-bake spells for the completely-inept to heal all their pinpricks and to ward their offices against eavesdropping. Or, she supposed, to make it easier to eavesdrop. Either way, this place sounded like it had been a real pleasant working environment. But for sure it was helping their boss-man now; or would, if Buffy could find him the right spell to heal his butt.

/Also, someone _had_ to have worked overtime in here sometime. There _has_ to be a spell around somewhere to freshen up before a big meeting, right?/

“This one’s… no good,” Angel pronounced almost immediately, with the quickest of dismissive glances; almost before she had even put the book in front of his nose.

“Wow. That was fast.”

“Yeah, well… it calls for… The translation’s… a bit rough, but…” He shook his head a little, moaned with it. “Where’s the… Groosalugg when you… need him?”

“The what?”

His face closed up. “Never… mind. We’ve got… to keep looking.”

Buffy started to turn, shifting the book with her, heart sinking as she stared at the two piles of magickal tomes; one, much taller, through which they’d already sifted, and the much smaller one they had left. Their hopes of a fast cure for Angel’s damaged body were dwindling rapidly. Which was so not of the good, because she just really couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something going seriously wrong for Spike right now. That he needed her. 

Which meant she needed to get back. Like, yesterday. /Dammit!/

“…Born of… human… Part of… demon…” Angel whispered from somewhere behind her elbow. “Groosalugg… probably wouldn’t… have helped… anyway. Unless there’s… a reverse clause…” 

Buffy straightened slowly from where she was bent all despairingly over the dwindling stack of options. “Is that what the spell said?”

“Yeah. Have to use… blood of someone… born out of… human but… magickally tied to… demon world. ‘Taint of the… blood of the… thousand realms...” He made a twisted sort of face. “You know… these things. The language is… always so…”

Certitude struck. Doubt assailed her. Waves of them; rushing and receding. /The magick is in my ‘essence’, whatever the hell that means, not my blood, or Dawn wouldn’t be totally human. She would’ve been activated when all the Potentials were. So will it still work?/ 

Heck; would it still work if a total magickal dullard did the spell part? /Wil always said that the energy comes just as much from need, from emotion, as from ability. And these spellbooks here are all… spelled to work for anyone. Just… tell him and don’t worry. It’ll _work_./

“Angel,” she interrupted him tensely, “let me tell you a little story about how the first Slayer was made. And then a little more about the conversation I had with the Scourge.”

***

**S:**  
  
That whole thing had been a debacle. You couldn’t fight when you were trying to protect a bunch of exhausted civilians. He’d lost every damn one of them. They were all grabbed up and thrown onto one truck—including Fred/Illyria—while another played chicken with him. 

At least maybe they’d be done with the damned corpse after this.

Spike had gone head-on with the second vehicle, struggling with all he had to wreck the bitch and get to his folk. In the end their attackers had quite literally thrown Illyria, still screaming in Fred’s terrified voice, off their little slave-wagon, right in front of his attacker’s rig. 

When it had impacted her she’d exploded back into the Blue Meanie. But it had been too late by that point, as all their humans were being driven off like cattle. 

They’d fought, of course. A nice little melee, him and Illyria taking out a good, round half-dozen of the bitches… but in the end the distraction of watching his charges being turned into some kind of zombies had proven his downfall, and he was knocked out good and proper. 

He woke up in some sort of fucking dungeon, shackled to a damn wall, with all his people around him. Excepting Illyria, of course. They’d apparently come up with some other arrangements for her, being as she was clearly a special case. 

All his other people, the pulsers? Were sort of crawling about looking half-dead; or rather, even more dead than they’d already looked from all their wounds and things before the bitches had shown up. And not a one could talk anymore… except to hiss his name. Haunting him with his failure, which was nice, yeah?

Their vacant stares and sucked-dry forms and drooling mouths told the story. The demon who had led the sortie was some sort of life-sucking psychic vampire of the zombie-making sort. Who the hell knew what kind, but people called _him_ bad? /Look at these poor blighters! At least in my day I killed ‘em clean when I’d done with ‘em./

Luckily, as far as he could tell, Johns wasn’t one of the lost causes, because seemed like these ones were done for. It was a slow death for the lot, rotting while their bodies were still alive. Fucking ironic considering all the bloody effort he’d been to trying to keep them in one piece.

Bleedin’ slags, rendering all his hard work useless.

And what in the name of sodding Saint George were they going to do to _him_, since apparently they couldn’t suck his unlife out his navel or his bung or whatever the hell it was they did? Else, he supposed, they would have done it already.

Well, whatever it was, he couldn’t do much about it now. For the mo’ it was back to his standard when he was dangling about by his wrists in a dungeon. Think of Buffy. He’d more or less perfected that art when The bloody First had had him down in those caverns last year. /Nothing new, Spike m’lad. Not half-bad, even, when you have thoughts like the most recent to keep you company./ Though, of course, such thoughts tended to come accompanied with a frustrating renewal of certain energies that he had thought well-spent in battle. Not so much, it seemed, sod it.

Christ, he could still feel Buffy rolling around underneath his flesh like a lion roaring. Only reason he wasn’t running down like a used-up battery. Even a vampire needed downtime eventually, and he’d been going non-stop for probably the equivalent of a couple of days now on only the blood he’d slugged down before the battle behind the Hyperion; or had been till recent events. 

Hell. How the bitches had managed to subdue him in the first place was beyond him, when he had Slayer blood flooding his being. Buffy’s blood. Didn’t matter that it wasn’t much; the thing was still beyond his comprehension. Unless it was that fact had caused the distraction, thrown him off his game, with him that worried about her. 

He could feel that she was well, right enough, but not having her close enough to smell her, know for certain she wasn’t in any kind of jeopardy, was enough to drive a bloke mad. /Though, considering current circumstances, probably best if you’re not about at mo’, my Love. Much as I’d prefer to have you come tear-assin’ in any second and cut me loose the way you did when The soddin’ First had me bound up like a chew toy…/

/Least I’m not bein’ tortured yet/ he thought grimly; though obviously there was a time for everything in a place like this. /’Less you count bein’ kept from goin’ after your missing mate as torture./ Which it did, but as long as he could feel her and know she was alive and not currently fighting for her life, he supposed he’d do. Meantime, as dungeons went, this was like Club Med. Especially compared to out there, stuck with being in charge and all that rubbish.

Buffy could have it, that leadership bollocks. He’d rather just knock heads together. /In here you can just kick back. Thoughts of Buffy’s hot little quim, her letting you bite her, claim and bond her…/

He realized abruptly that he had been wrong. There was, in fact, torture. He had the hell of a stiffy right now and no way to toss off. 

Well. Fuck. He supposed it must be divine intervention, then, that he wasn’t afforded much time to enjoy the nice scrolling of NC-17 memories—tough to sink into them, for one thing, with a load of twisted up zombies about, moaning one’s name in a less-than-attractive manner and assaulting one’s nose in a highly insulting fashion—before he was interrupted. 

The door to his prison opened. Light assailed his dark-adjusted pupils. His fellow prisoners made hissing noises and scurried into the dark corners. 

Some rail-thin, imperious-looking minger entered the room, a retinue of other bitches arrayed behind her. The whole lot of them appeared to be wearing, as his eyes adapted, some sort of bloody catsuits; all except for the one in the lead. That one had pointy bumps all up the backs of her arms, and seemed to have stitched herself together some sort of frock made of the skins of a whole load of other demons’ hides. 

Attractive. “Like the dress, pet,” he informed the standout tersely. “Very _haute couture_.”

_“Thanks_.” Sarcasm for days, this one. “Huh. You’re awfully peppy, for a guy in chains.”

“Yeah, well, you know. With every new day comes an opportunity.” He tried a nonchalant shrug, though it didn’t take, considering his situation. 

The natty bitch squatted in front of him, looked him up and down with interest. “See, that’s what I thought. So when the change of management happened, I took my shot.” She waved her hand around. “You like my place?”

“Wouldn’t mind having a better room. You know, maybe one with a bed…”

That one earned him a snort of disdain. “Oh, we thought we were being real accommodating, considering this one’s light-tight. Won’t do to have our guest turning to dust…”

Spike let his voice harden, dropped the banter. “Pull the other one, sweetheart. Haven’t dusted under this sun yet, and I’ve been here damn near a whole day. Let’s get to it. What the bloody hell do you want from me?” 

Queen-bitch hardened right back at him. “You’re stepping on my lines, vampire.”

/Sure./ “I don’t want a soddin’ thing from you, you nutter. You attacked me. I was just standin’ about.”

Something about his pronouncement seemed to really brass her off. “Listen, Swizzle-Stick. I’m trying to build something here. A nice, cohesive, women-power kind of place, you get me? And you come traipsing along into my territory, obviously building your own little mobile kingdom…”

/Right, okay./ He was starting to get a picture of the problem, here. “Wasn’t buildin’ anything, you mad bint. Just mindin’ my own bloody business. How was I to know you’d claimed the spot? Just passin’ through.”

“Yeah, well, you got in my way. And one thing I don’t need clogging up the works when I start over is some stuck-up master vamp with a flock of human blood-cows, trying to use Beverly Hills as a start-up.” She leaned forward; got right into his face. Spike was briefly arrested by the way her arm-bumps caught the light from the open door to stand out in relief. “You’re in my way, vamp-boy. You’ll pay for it. I was at the bottom in the other world. Here I’m at the top; and I’m gonna stay up top, _capisce?”_

/Yeah, yeah. Bluster an’ that./ If he’d heard one baby demon rant about the power structure, he’d heard them all. Self included./ “So, what? You gonna bore me to death with small-talk?”

She leaned back, a smirk on her face. “No, I was thinking about torture. You know, to take out my aggressions.”

Spike tamped down on the rising swirl of dread, the ‘Oh, Christ, not agains’ clamoring for space in his mind. Set himself firmly. “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t be the first. Probably won’t be the last. Been gone at by some master craftsmen…” /And women. And sires. And grandsires…/ “…So you’ll have to work bloody hard to make me cry.” What he wouldn’t give for a sodding fag about now, though.

“Oh?” The crazy bint tilted her head a bit, looking interested. “Like who? Anyone I’d know?” 

Spike shrugged nonchalantly. “You know. Hellgods. My own sire. My grandsire, the great and mighty sodding Angelus. The First bloody Evil. Hell; my mate, once upon a time. And, I’ve lived with Xander Harris. You don’t know the git, but he could bore the skin off of a Thurgald just by talkin’, so if you wanna have a bit of palaver about the many ways you can torture a bloke, you might as well start there…”

A clawed hand swung, caught him hard across the cheekbone. “You talk too much, vampire. Shut him up, Noelle.”

Well, hell. That was actually a decent enough strike. Stung a bit. When he turned back, some bird behind the slag was squinting at him. Finally she shook her head, frowning. “Doesn’t seem to work on vamps, Non.”

“Well. That sucks. Guess we’ll stick to torture, then.”

Another bitch behind the first two made a pouty sort of face under a halo of brown curls. “Do you have to mess him up? He’s kind of pretty.”

“Shut up, Spider. We don’t play with the guests.”

“Right. Sorry. Just saying.”

Spike turned his gaze briefly on the brunette, fixing her face in his mind’s eye in case he saw her again. /They always go for the Spike charm./ Maybe he could use that. 

‘Spider’ saw him looking, smiled invitingly at him. 

Yeah. Strong maybe there. 

Filing the information away for future reference, Spike dragged his eyes back to ‘Non’ in her skins and lifted his scarred brow in challenge. “Right party-pooper, aren’t you? All work, no play?”

Behind Non, Spider threw him a winning sort of look. Clearly interested. Definitely something he could capitalize on.

“I don’t consider your sort interesting the way Spider does, vampire. Torture, though…” Non’s entire being brightened. “Now, that’s a good time.” 

/Well, fuck./ “So, you gonna start by talking me to death, or are we gonna get on with it?” It fell out of his face before he could put a stop to it, because sometimes he had the self-preservation skills of a sodding infant. But for fucksake, if there was one thing Spike hated worse than torture, it was waiting around in anticipation of the thing. He inevitably made it worse by popping off about it, but, well. Thems were the breaks, as they said. 

Non laughed then, clearly entertained by his bravado. “You know what? I kind of like you, vampire. Not enough to leave you alone. You invaded my property and I’m going to make you suffer for it… but I like you. So I’ll maybe make you my favorite new hobby…” 

He couldn’t help it. He managed a two-finger-salute through his shackles. 

“Was that supposed to mean something?”

“It’s British for fuck off,” Spike explained helpfully.

“Oh. Well, that’s nice. Jeez; anyone would think you almost want to be tortured. Are you a masochist or something?”

/Not for you./ Didn’t think telling her yes would make her give up her plan to ruin his sodding life, so he just got on with it, doggedly. “Whatever keeps me on my feet after a long bloody day. You gonna press on, or just sneer at me up there from on high?”

“Oh, you don’t want to goad me, pretty boy.” The bitch smiled in a way that was definitely less than confidence-boosting, then stood. “Esmerelda will prepare some special implements just for you. We’ll be back soon.”

/Oh. Joy./ “I’ll be here.”

The harlot rose and made tracks out of his haunted cell, her retinue falling in behind her. Spike did his best to keep up the confident façade till they were all out and the door had shut. Bint had an inferiority complex. And it seemed she was gonna work it through on him. Bloody fuck. 

Spike prepped himself for a nice spot of hot irons or whatever the hell was in store. /Buffy… Christ, pet, come back, yeah?/

***  
  
  
  
If y'all are already upset with me... Save it for the next one.   
All I can say is all of this really is for good reasons... And I'm sorry. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooooookaaaay... so this is one of the shorter chapters I'll post from here on in, if only because if I posted the following BuffyPOV, it would climb to an unacceptable 11k, so no dice. Short, though, has no bearing on punch, because...
> 
> Spike really goes through the wringer here. Which is not entirely my fault, since I'm riffing off comic canon. **Fair (content) warning here, this one is the one with non-con happening, though much of the event happens off-screen.** I don't pull punches that that's what's going on, though, and it's in keeping with the way non-con was portrayed on the show, so if you're not ready for that, you'll be able to tell when it's about to go down and you can jump over the pre-show and skip ahead to the next set of three stars, where the next scene begins.   
(The torture, btw, happens all off-screen, and is summarized in a line or two in that second scene.)
> 
> For anyone who is upset about the participants involved in the non-con, I'm pretty adamant in my read that the personnel involved were very much in a dub-con situation, at least at first, in canon, and the whole thing squicked me out hardcore when reading the comics, so considering Buffy's in the picture now, I really can't imagine it going any other way, what with Spike being a prisoner and all. Also, this event brings up important conversational points for Spuffy later on when they have their reunion, which is right and necessary.
> 
> Okay, I've done my due diligence.

**S:**

The threatened torture didn’t come about anytime soon, though. Waiting for it was almost worse than having it done to him. Damn near made him mental, waiting for the sodding door to open and the sentence to be carried out. In the end, the only thing he could think to do to keep his nonexistent blood pressure from going through the roof was to go back to his self-abusive meditations. Any road, it kept him from going mad listening to the zombies hovering about, hissing his name and touching his ankles like a bunch of nasty bootlickers.

Another kind of madness entirely, of course, to think of Buffy, but at least it was a more pleasant sort. Nice daydream to think of her near to, helping him to pass the time in the most pleasant of ways, and alternate those with nice, gory fantasies of revenge and escape. The carousel was an all-too-natural one, considering he knew quite well Buffy was nowhere closer to him. 

The bond told him she hadn’t moved from her station somewhere off to the east. His blood roiled with the anxiety of it, his inner demon awake and anxious from the unwonted distance between self and mate and unable to find rest with the remains of battle-lust and claiming tolling through his being in a crashing ebb and flow. The threat of danger hovering all round, of course, couldn’t but help to keep a nice edge on. 

Spike was on a high, and was like to remain on red alert for the forseeable future, with no way to tuck his demon safe away anytime soon. The inner monster would hang about just so, jangling, till he found some way to calm himself; which meant of course that he badly needed some sort of fucking release. Another fight; _something_. Vengeance. Whatever came in handy. One needn’t think of one’s mate in such circumstances to have the hell of a stiffy, though of course it was quite difficult in same to avoid doing so. 

And nothing to be done about any of it, being as he was likely to remain in chains for who knew how long, until the events which had him so keyed up were paid off in the most painful way possible. 

Christ knew he’d been here before; standing about in pained anticipation. With how many damnable times he’d hung about like this in some stress position till Angelus could walk in and comment on his agonized state, one might think vamps enjoyed abuse for the sake of it, lusted after pain as an end in and of itself rather than a means to. Really though, the whole bloody thing was the demon’s way of preparing himself for an upcoming ordeal. Setting itself to endure. Fight or fuck, until the entire thing became scrambled in the neural pathways, because there was no flight in that equation for one’s demon-side.

The problem being… until one got to the fighting or fucking, then, it was a damned inconvenient way to spend one’s time. Especially considering his shackled state, and the unbelievably foul company while he did it. 

Right useful state to be in, seeing as the only sods around him were brain-dead zombies, he was about to be tormented any moment, and his hands were not anything like helpful right now. “You’re a right brainless little sot, you know that?” he informed his prick darkly. “The girl’s nowhere near you, yeah? Mind your own.”

“Is that for me?”

He opened his eyes with a start, aware very belatedly that the door had opened again. /Christ, you could end up dead without even knowing it, paying fuck-all attention!/ He’d been working so hard to drown out the local stimuli—zombies and the lot—that he’d stopped listening for the approach of his torturers. Hell.

The brown-haired girl—Spider, was it?—was approaching him, looking him up and down as she did so.

She was alone, carrying nothing that looked remotely like an implement worthy of torture. And, well; he recognized a blatant appraisal when he saw one, knew right off that he was on the receiving end of a sexual assessment. Which, alright, tended to make one feel a bit vulnerable, dangling about by one’s wrists and all. He had the urge to yelp, ‘Oi! My eyes are up here!’ Instead he did his best to relax into an indolent pose, despite the fact it was tough to manage that sort of thing in his position. Rustled up a grin. /Remember; this is the chit was eyeing you up. Didn’t want you spoilt. Make the most of the chance, yeah?/ “Who’s askin’, pet?”

“My name’s Maria. Maria Harley.” 

He looked her up and down in turn, assessing. Well enough to be going on with, if he were interested. Pixyish. Fair rack, pert arse, nice hair, bit of a halo of brunette ringlets. In general, the sort he’d always preferred, actually, AB (that being, ante-Buffy). And putting off enough vibes to let him know her intent was entirely a matter of carnal avarice. Which put him in a damned precarious position, considering. /Step lightly, my lad. You have to promise just enough here to get out of this mess without promisin’ too much, innit?/ “Alright, Maria Harley. What’s it to you?” he enquired, pleasantly enough considering demon etiquette. No telling if the chit was a demon, but odds on she was at least partly so if she was in the soul-sucker’s retinue. For his money anyone human had probably already been reduced to kibble by now. Any road, she didn’t smell entirely human.

The pixie shot him a coy sort of look from under her fringe as she made her slow, deliberate approach. “You look like you could use some help, there.” And to his everlasting startlement, something what looked like spider’s legs shot out from behind her back. 

He did his best not to flinch away. After all, he’d seen crazier things in the demon world. “Bloody hell, girl, those are some appendages,” he managed in an admiring tone. /Not so much a pixie, then, as a widow-maker. Explains the nickname. Still; might warn a fellow, eh?/

“They come in handy.” She moved a little closer still, her multitude of chitinous legs carelessly shoving his zombified charges aside as she did so. Once she’d attained a certain proximity, she eyed him up and down. “So. Need a hand?”

He blinked at the openly lascivious way in which she eyed him. Thought about telling her, ‘No no, I’m fine, thanks all the same,’ but figured that probably would be impolitic considering his circumstance. He settled instead for eying her warily as she moved ever closer. As he did so, something clicked. A spot of recognition. “Oi, I know you. You’re the bird was driving the truck that kept trying to run straight over me.”

The spider-bint blushed fetchingly. “Sorry. Just following orders. Noelle says jump, we say yes ma’am.” She tilted her head, watching him with interest, as if waiting for an answer to her question. It took him a moment to realize why.

He had forgotten he was being propositioned. And he had forgotten demon ways enough that he was being quite thoroughly loutish by this point. He should have indicated enthusiasm by now; or, alternatively, a slavering intent to murder her. 

Those were really the only two responses to a sexual advance in polite demon society. And he had done neither. Because he had become a socially inept moron after years of living amongst humans. “Name’s Spike,” he interjected instead, still watching her slow advance cautiously, and hoped she’d think he’d misconstrued her patient wait as one for his return introduction rather than for reply to her importunings.

“Spike.” She seemed to be tasting the word. “You fight like a champ… Spike.” And her entire mien exuded warmth. 

/Oh bloody hell./ “Ta, luv.” /Wasn’t meant to get you all hot and bothered though, spider-girl./ Though, to be fair, he had led her on a bit earlier. /Christ knows I have to take any openings I can in this place, and fuck; I’ve put myself in between a bloody rock and a hard place here. Shit./

She smiled broadly at him, looking tickled pink at what had no doubt appeared to be a friendly interchange. Moved a step closer, and how the hell was he supposed to wangle his way out of this, while yet still managing some sort of bid for freedom? 

His options were rapidly dwindling from two to one. /Fuck./

Her eyes flicked south as she neared him, though, and she pouted a little when she saw his stiffy had gone. “Aw. What _happened?_ I thought maybe we could play.”

Bleeding Christ. The bird was off her trolley. “Listen, Maria is it? I dunno about you, but I gave up on my whips and chains days a while back. Ta ever so.”

It was not entirely unexpected, but it surely added to his thorough discomfort when she moved very abruptly into his personal bubble, on her spider legs, _onto the wall_, and just hung there in front of him with her face directly in his. “Bet I could get it to come back.”

He was absolutely _not_ feeling this. Not with Buffy still fading on his tongue and in his veins, and memories of her smell, her taste there, sacred and meant to remain untainted by any other. Christ; beyond that, his head was entirely not in this game, and maybe if he hadn’t just had his love again, maybe if she hadn’t come back into his life, then for the sake of his survival, the price of his freedom, he might even have enjoyed the encounter. But now… 

Problem was, he was no sodding diplomat, and there was no good way to get out of this. The demon world didn’t really have any easy way to say, ‘No thanks, don’t want to fuck you’ without it ending in someone being killed. And he couldn’t kill her. Not shackled to a wall. Didn’t particularly want to anyway. She was his first contact from within this Non bitch’s court. Could he use the chit, he needed to; to help anything left of his flock escape, help get himself out at the least. Locate Illyria, since she’d been no doubt somehow turned back into Fred in the interim, or they’d all already have been freed long since. 

He needed to do something with this moment if he was going to make good his escape, get back to Buffy; even avoid a nice spot of torture. But at what fucking cost? 

Christ, he needed to figure out some way he could use the bint without having to fuck her to do it. Buffy would never forgive him if… 

Hell; he’d never forgive himself. “No offense, Maria. I think you’re lovely, but…” /Oh!/ He dashed it out in a sudden flash of last-ditch inspiration. Something that just might work. An out, demon-etiquette-wise. “I’m someone else’s property…”

The mad bint was kissing him before he had the chance to finish his sentence, and hell. That hadn’t worked. Because she had way too many limbs, and she was paying fuck-all attention, and Christ, this was a bad dream. A bad demon dream, because he knew exactly what she was doing, had done much the same himself in another life, and this? This was what passed in the demon world for courtship. ‘I want. You want? Let’s fuck.’ 

It had a certain straightforward charm to it, but it was really not his speed anymore. He tried his best to pull away, but he had only so much space between his head and the wall, so he only managed to succeed in banging his skull hard against thick, badly-poured concrete. “Oi!” he managed around her assaulting mouth. “No offense, Maria, but aside from belonging to someone, I’m really not in the mood, what with being in a dungeon, and…”

“So I’ll put you in the mood.” And without another word she dropped from the wall to the floor and started to unzip his jeans.

Oh hell no. This was _not_ happening. For Chrissakes, this was not… “Maria, he managed, fighting for dignity, and her mouth was hovering just above his deflated cock, and he really did _not_ want this right now. “You can obviously do whatever you want to do to me, since I’m chained to a wall. But I’m not going to enjoy it. Dunno if you care about that, or if you’re just in it for you, but just in case you wanted this to be the sort of entertainment that’s mutual…”

She lifted her eyes to meet his. “I could unshackle you. It would be defying orders, but…”

Well, now. There was a thought. If he played this right he could knock her over the head with minimal interference with his bits, and get the fuck out of here. He would just have to let her… 

He would just have to shove down the part of him, the souled part, that was repulsed, and that felt as if he would be cheating on Buffy, because right now this was about survival. And he could always shove Willie-boy back, out of the way, and drag his demon up to the fore. It would take some damnable work, since this chit wasn’t rousing him in that way. But he’d have to manage it. Let the Mr. The Bloody have at it and survive the encounter in that way. It would be an emotional cushion. The demon would know how to handle the situation. It would be right up his alley, and then everything should be…

Of course, he knew he was fooling himself. His demon was just as bloody much of a one-woman-man as he had ever been in his first life. That was _how_ his demon had become a one-woman man; by taking on everything he had been as William Pratt and making it his own as William the Bloody, Slayer-killer. Not to mention, as far as said demon was concerned he was essentially a newlywed right now, which meant he was truly conning himself with the idea that any part of his psyche would be any more capable of standing this unwonted violation intact. 

Besides; even if he _could_ get his inner demon to swallow the thing from a matter of expedience, he knew from recent experience all about how these things filtered through the sodding soul nowadays. Guilt, when it came to Buffy, was a whole other affair. Even if it were something he might have been able to justify to himself when he’d been with Dru, now it was just not in it for him. Front row seat or no, in charge of the body or no, Willie-boy would be there. Would know; just as some remaining poncy shreds of him had always felt, experienced, _known_ everything that Spike-the-demon had ever gone through, throughout a hundred and damn near twenty-five long years. His humanity had suffered through it all in silence the entire sodding time, crying out all his tortured, nancyboy angst over every moment of his unlife, even while he’d reveled in being freed of his old principles. Made the demon weak, even as it made him strong enough to love. And now that part of him was in the driver’s seat most of the time, the two echoing each other? 

This would devastate him. He was made of fidelity in every part of him, only wanted to be owned. And if his softer side was tougher than he had once been in his first genteel life—if only by virtue of having survived intact at all—still he was no demon. He sat there balancing out the demonic tendencies with a man’s sensibilities. He would want vengeance, perhaps, for what had been done to him… but he would also be conflicted about killing a woman…

All of Spike would come headlong into confrontation when it came to that. Because from a demon's perspective, he really couldn’t kill the bitch for it later; not when from her standpoint Maria wasn’t even doing something all that evil. She was just doing what came naturally. Want, take, have. Consent… didn’t really enter into it when you were a demon. 

He’d just have to let her have her way with him for a bit, then crack her over the head the minute he had a hand free and get the bloody fuck out. /Just have to force the words out, Willie-boy, and then…/ “Yeah, why don’t you do that. Then we can have a lot of fun.”

Arachne-lite watched him for a moment, looking pleased… and then settled back on her heels, and fuck. Something in his eyes had betrayed him, hadn’t they. Shit. 

“No. You’re going to try to get away, aren’t you?”

/Bloody buggering…/

“This would've been a lot more fun if you could use your hands. Oh well,” she went on philosophically, and bent back to start fiddling around with his cock, and he couldn’t stop her any more than he could stop himself getting hard from it. All he could do was endure, and hope that was all she wanted to do to him, because with those spider legs of hers she could have him any way she wanted him and there was piss all he could do about it. 

As he endured, he fought to forget another time he had stood against a wall, his hands stilled by implicit threat of violence and overwhelming strength, and let someone who wanted him have her way with him directly after he’d told her to leave him be. And fought not to let that uncomfortable mix of pain-pleasure-love-hate color what was happening to him now.

***

**S:**  
  
“So… Maria tells me you’re a real tasty treat.”

Spike endured the mocking as stoically as he had endured the rape, eyes front and looking more or less at Non’s right ear. “Yeah, I’m a right lolly.” His eyes flickered to Spider, and he frowned uncertainly. The girl was avoiding his eyes, looked nothing like the self-assured bint who’d had at him in the cell the other day. What the bloody hell had happened to her, then?

Non leaned back in her throne, fingering her lip. Her short-cropped reddish hair glinted in the orange light from the windows of the hotel to set fingers of blood on her face. “She said you were kind of inhibited, though.”

“Yeah, well… contrary to popular belief, not all blokes are up for it all the time. Without consent it doesn’t really count as sex, yeah? And it’s a bit tough to consent when you’re tied to a wall.” /Bit tough to consent to anything when you’re tryin’ to get out of bein’ tortured. Not that it helped me at all in the long run./ Spike was doing his best to hold very fucking still. It helped with the pain. He wasn’t healing all that fast. Maybe something to do with the fact there wasn’t any real nightfall here to speak of—or was there? He hadn’t seen one yet—and definitely a lot to do with the fact that he was, by this point, running lean, blood-wise. 

It had been a few days since he’d had Buffy, and Slayer-blood or no, that had been but a mouthful. A promise and a bonding, and nothing at all to do with the other. /Never about feeding, from her. An exchange. A sacrament, but not a feed./ Even when it might be that he got fed from it as a side-benefit, as well, that would never be… what it was about. /I promise. Only ever about _her;_ no matter what./ That was, if he ever got to see her again, sod it all. 

/A few days since Buffy. Longer than that since that O-positive from Lawyerville. Running short, Spike./ 

His mouth tasted dangerously dry, and his muscles weren’t much to speak of already. Needed them, too, about now. 

Was easy enough to keep Willie-boy submerged right now, between hunger and the rest. /Nothing like a spot of torture to retrain a bloke in how to bury himself to the eyebrows in his demon./ Was a bit late in coming, but it had kept him placid for the most part during the torture itself; kept his wit close to hand, helped him manage the pain.

Non’s eyebrow lifted as his dramatic little, brassed off speech percolated. “Consent?” She said it like it was a foreign word. As well she might, he supposed, since she, too, was a demon. “You’re an odd one, vampire. Been spending a lot of time with humans, have you?”

Best not to tell them that he also had his soul back in the driver’s seat. “Something like that.” 

The silence lengthened. He tried to catch spider-bint’s eye again. Got nothing from her. Well. What the fuck, then. “Why’m I up here? Wanted to have a go at me in public? Put on a nice show?”

Non eyed him for a moment, then shook her head. “Wanted to see your reaction to this.” She gave a nod to someone—he wasn’t sure who, exactly—and some bint behind Maria reached round to drag the chit’s jumpsuit open. 

Spider-bint had burn marks all over her breasts and shoulders. 

She’d been tortured as well. Bloody fuck.

“My girls know better than to entertain themselves with the prisoners. No one touches my toys but me. Maria, apologize please, or I’ll have to kill you.”

Horror curled in Spike’s stomach. He’d not wanted what had happened, but this was a bit much. “Oh, hell; she doesn’t have to apologize. Christ!”

Non laughed then; a maniacal screech. “Not to you, idiot! To me! Spider, tell me you’re sorry!”

To Spike’s stunned amazement, the brunette fell to her knees, curls bouncing, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Non! Please, don’t…”

“Was he worth it?”

“I’m so sorry, I’m so…”

“Get out of my sight. Touch him again and I’ll have Esmerelda cut off your head. You’re lucky I think you’re a good fighter.”

Maria fled.

/Christ./

Inhaling deeply to settle his nerves and wishing like hell he had a fag, Spike did his best to shoot for unmoved. He was still up here—out of the sodding dungeon, up in the throne room—still had to find out why. 

Might as well make good on the time he had here. “So.” He waved one hand a little, to the accompaniment of clinking chains. “Why you keeping me around, then, anyway? You can’t eat me, or whatever the hell it is you did to my people, or you’d’ve done it already.” He winced a little when the injudicious movement caught one of his burn-scars just so, the taut, shiny skin over his right pectoral ripping a little with the strain. The torture had been… manageable, but on top of other recent violations, he was a bit at the end of his rope.

Christ, he could use some blood. Any day now and he’d start thinking the rats were looking fetching. 

Stress would do that. /Buffy, where are you?/ 

Still off to the sodding east. Hadn’t moved a tic. Was she, too, being held captive by someone? If so, her captivity was a sight easier than his own. Nothing in their link made him think she was in any distress, which was both relieving and a bit frustrating. /If you’re alright, pet, then get your pert arse back here!/

“True,” Non was saying, a slight frown marring her sharp features. “Though I’ll admit you’re fun to play with. But you said something interesting when we were making that nice cross-shaped burn on you earlier…”

/Oh, bloody hell. What did I say?/ “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. You said ‘Charlie-boy’ hit harder than me, and he’s human. And it got me to thinking about something your girlfriend said a little bit ago.”

The shiver was back, this time with reinforcements. “What’d she say, then?” Maybe he could suss out from the conversation if Illyria was Illyria right now, or Fred.

“She asked me if I knew where someone named Wesley was—which is, I’m guessing, that gross-ass, rotting body she was carting around, and really, what kind of hobby is that?—or at least, he matches the description. I mean, as much as anyone can after rotting in the sun for a few days. You’d think he was prince charming, the way she rhapsodized about him…”

“Yeah, well; they had a thing.”

“I guess. Anyway, then she asked me if I’d seen ‘Charles’. I played along and asked her who Charles was, and she described ‘Charles Gunn’. Nice young Black man, good at fighting vampires? Looks great in a suit, blah blah. Some kind of love triangle, I’m guessing?”

“Long time ago, I think. Way before my time.”

“Well. Anyway. It got me to thinking. Rumor has it there’s a new player in town. Vampire. Strongest one in south LA. Killed off the leader of the pack and took over; already making waves. Those vamps were already setting up to run all of of South LA, but this guy straight-up took over his territory in one fell swoop. Pretty fancy for some fanger who just started up. Rumor has it he has it in for all of us who’re building kingdoms; though why he’d bother anyone else if he’s already got the whole southern half of the city is beyond me...”

Spike was at a loss. “Why the bloody hell are you tellin’ me this? If you think all us vamps know each other, I’d hate to burst your bubble, but we don’t. And even if we did, I’m not exactly chummy with most vamps, so…”

“I think you’d know this vamp. A human we caught running from him said he was called ‘Gunn’.”

Spike staggered back a bit, in spite of himself. /Oh, Christ no. Oh, Charlie-boy. Oh, bloody hell./ That lad would hate being turned worse than anything. Spike didn’t know what it was, but the kid had a real personal issue with vampirism. Probably something to do with family, judging from his uneasiness around even Angel. Bred-in-the-bone, like. It was the kind of deep-seated hate never went away, no matter how comfy you got with an ally life had thrown at you. 

He rather thought that lad would rather have bled out than be sired. 

No wonder he’d risen quickly in the ranks, though. Kid had been a talented fighter. Slap a demon on him and he’d be a right terror, and no mistake. 

“So you do know him.”

Spike pulled himself up with an effort. “I knew a man named Gunn. No telling who this is.”

Non grinned; a venal, mirthless expression, and leaned forward. “I’m sure there’s something real metaphysical and vampiric in there, but I don’t care. See, here’s what I’m thinking. You have ties to what’s turning out to be the strongest vampire leader in the area. So I’m thinking maybe I trade you and the weird shapeshifter chick to him in exchange for a partnership.” 

Spike snorted dismissively. “You know sod-all about vampires, if you think someone newly-turned is gonna care a whit about people he used to know. Most of us, first thing we wanna do is kill everyone we ever loved.” He jerked his chin at the bitch, much more worried at the moment about his mutable companion’s current state. “What about Illyria? What have you done with her, then?”

Non smiled at him and gestured with one hand to a spot behind and to one side of her ‘throne area’. One of her girls bowed and pulled aside a curtain with a flourish.

The curtain had concealed a freestanding item; something metal, like a massive sodding safe. Probably the hotel’s vault, dragged into this room for whatever reason. It had a bit of a window. 

As Spike stared at it, a face in appeared; was framed there for a mo’, cold and brassed off. 

Inside that titanium cell, ferocious and raging, was the azure Leather Queen.

***  
  
  
  
  
We'll find out what Buffy's been up to during all this insanity next time.   
I'm sorry about it. *throws flowers at Spike*  
  
This, by the way, has been a really crap week for me writing-wise, when it comes to hurting Spike, and I'm not happy at all about it, if it makes anyone feel any better.  
  
Anyone needs me, I'll be in the pub drowning myself in lemon schweppes and gin.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for sticking with me through the last chapter, which I know was painful. This one is, I promise, the last of the "our babies are separate" chapters. And Buffy, as I am sure we are all glad to hear, is going to realize some very important things about her ex due to long-term exposure to him when he's in too much pain to put on his normal show, etc... He's going to let some stuff slip, and it's going to crack (most of) the last remains of her previous view of him. WOOT.  
(Yes, she needs to have one or two more revelations about their past, and things he's done without her knowledge or consent, but those, rest assured, are coming.)  
Onward!

**B:  
**  
Buffy returned to the main room and set aside the book with the now-familiar ‘cleansing’ spell. It never actually made her feel ‘clean’, per se, but it did at least make her smell less like a person who hadn’t had a shower in two weeks, and lifted the stains and odors from her clothes. One hoped it also removed all the things from said clothes which caused those odors, because evil law firm? Not exactly Rodeo Drive when it came to changes of wardrobe, and she had pretty much run out of options. “I don’t mind helping you, Angel, it’s just that I have people to take care of back in Beverly Hills. I’ve left Spike and Illyria kind of in the lurch, you know?” /Like for real./

“Don’t leave me.”

It tore her to pieces. She didn’t _want_ to leave him, but her loyalties were in shreds right now. She had no idea what was going on with Spike and their little covey of terrified human refugees across town; and how was he managing right now with Illyria doing her switch-back-and-forth thing, plus the water thing, plus… Just everything. But she knew something was up. Okay right now, but Something Had Been Bad. Things felt… a little more settled on the bond for the last several 'days', but it had been… bad for a while. She could tell. 

The urgency thrummed in her almost constantly now, like a toothache throughout the bizarrely disorienting, unchanging days. A tattoo in brain and body, drumming inside, driving her insane, making it difficult to sleep, confusing the already endless time and making the blank faces of the dead, powerless digital clocks into a mockery. Spike _needed_ her. Everything in her urged her to be gone, yesterday. It was like a coiled spring of unspent energy inside her, raging; like a constant, pounding message at the back of her brain that held her, sleepless and throbbing. ‘Go. _Go. GO.’_

And yet, how could she just up and bail on Angel like this, utterly defenseless and still mostly totally helpless, except for a dragon—who, granted, had the fire thing, but no opposable thumbs—and a (reported) _ghost_ who couldn’t pick up anything?(She was taking the so-called ghost on faith, since she’d never met it... and didn't really want to, honestly. She still felt pretty damned guilty over Wesley's death as it was.) 

The thing was… Angel was getting better. As in, she should be able to leave soon. But he still couldn’t really do or get anything for himself without the aid of magick; not yet. Like, at least he could more or less eat without help nowadays, but he still could barely move on his own. So unless the dragon could figure out what he wanted and could fit in wherever to fetch it like a ginormous collie, he was still kind of stuck needing a nurse. 

/Let me tell you the ways Buffy Summers has so never dreamed of being a nurse, by the way. Naughty or otherwise./

With a sigh, Buffy set aside the book with the cleansing spell as she approached, and eyed the prone figure. While the one that made her a little less not-so-fresh seemed to be pretty dependable, the spell they had used on Angel had had mixed results. As in, with something that had had Slayer blood in it, she had kind of been hoping for more shocking and sudden responsiveness; a big, vigorous brunet guy leaping to his feet and shouting, ‘I’m healed!’ maybe. Not so much, though. More, he was maybe healing at vamp-speed now, instead of human, was his guess, like she’d lent him some of her demon-y side, and…

Probably she’d done something wrong… or it would simply have worked better with a more competent wicca to do the spell-casting. Who knew. The fact was, he said he felt better, could feel the bones knitting. Also promising, the external bruising was gone; which was, to be honest, a relief not to have to look at them anymore—he’d looked awful—and he could, you know, _move_. But wasn’t magick supposed to either just work or… not? 

Heck, Buffy’s new wound had healed faster than he was, and she kind of had the sneaking suspicion that the rules of this world were kind of working against her human side, pitting it against her Slayer-demon side so that she was feeling kind of… splitty-at-the-seams. She didn’t really feel very ‘working together-y’ right now, and her normal healing rate was observably south of standard. 

But not _that_ slow. The cut on her hand was down to a thin white line, no scabs attached. And that thing had been _deep_.

To speed things along she was still mixing up those weird-smelling salves for him, applying them all over his thighs and shins and back, massaging him regularly; and sure, it was probably helping, but God knew how long it was going to take to get him on his feet. And he was human right now. If someone came in here and found him like this, without her… he’d be toast. 

But however much Angel had improved, she sure couldn’t move him. Not when just rolling him over made him groan like he was being murdered. And being able to do that was an improvement. So clearly she couldn’t get him and Spike in the same place to help them both, and, just… Argh.

/Dammit, Spike, why do you have to be completely in trouble when there’s nothing I can do about it?/ Every day led him further away from her, made it tougher to figure out where he was and what he was doing…

Also, her libido was going to strangle her in her sleep. _And_ while she was awake. She had thought it was bad living alone with her hand and a vibrator for the last couple of years, but that was pre-bite. Apparently that turned the already cray-cray Slayer sex-drive up to, like, mach-ninety; as if she had needed the upgrade. There wasn’t even anything to kill around here. She was basically just playing nurse to a broken guy, who, by the way, smelled disturbingly like someone she had once had sex with—though, also, weirdly not, and just how much did having a demon in them make a person smell a certain way?—and yet also, smelled like a broken and damaged person, which was of the weird and confusing and thankfully not so attractive, because otherwise the taboo was not helpful… And, just, any second now and she was going to lose her hold on reality and start cuddling up to the dragon. 

God, the timing of all this had been horrible. 

It had been two _weeks_ or something_._ She was losing her damn mind. 

How long did it take a person to heal from a broken back? If they had magickal help? They had the backup incantations and stuff for sedative use; not to mention the crazy glowing floaty traction thing. The wrist was good, and he was right that the legs seemed to be for sure knitting. She thought. No more grinding noises when he moved them, and the broken skin had healed to tender scars, so that was something. The bones had to be going back together too, right, under the splints? So she should be able to leave soon, right?

It didn’t help that the Slayer instinct on its own was making her nuts. All that enforced idleness, spread over invented time without clocks, between sleeps made useless without activity. She couldn’t call attention to Angel’s position by going out to patrol (i.e., loot for supplies and kill things) outside Wolfram and Hart; couldn’t even really leave his side for too long without risking too much, even to make her exercise circuit of the ruined building. She’d made it into a decent routine, sure, what with all the busted doorways for chin-ups and stairwells for makeshift gymnastics exercises and just general laps-running up and down the shattered structure… but it was getting repetitive and dull. She was an athlete at heart, but she also craved change, excitement, adrenaline… /Okay, violence. Let’s be real. It’s either violence or sex for you, and we all know option two is out of the question./ And she hadn’t seen any real action since her last skirmish on the way in. 

She was starting to have some very vivid dreams about Spike. On replay. Waking dreams, no less. Because, alright; both the skirmish and the sex had been the equivalent of _fifteen_ days ago. 

She was going to crack any minute now, just start _sparring_ with the damn dragon.

‘Cordelia’. 

There was another thing. If Angel was even remotely grateful about all she was doing, that would help too… and verbally he was. When he was conscious. Totally grateful, if in that weird way that said he kind of half-expected her to stay. Like he couldn’t imagine she wouldn’t. Not that she _would_ leave him like this, but…

But whenever he was in one of his magickally-induced trances, who did he talk to? 

Cordelia. 

Jeez, you’d think the girl who had supposedly been the love of his life and, you know, was the one who was _right here nursing his butt back to health _would at least merit a few fever-dream-mentions. But no. Up here at Wolfram and Hart it was all Cordelia, all the time.

Did a girl have to _die_ to get that kind of attention from Angel?

“Buffy… can I have some water?”

She fought down another sigh and shuffled to his side to uncap a bottle. Lifted it to his lips. “Here you go.”

He drank, waited till she had set aside the container, then, “I’m not just asking for me. It’s still not safe for you to head back across town anyway. Especially when you have no idea where he is…”

/That’s all _you_ know. I can find him./ 

Angel hadn’t seen her new scar. What with the fact that he spent all his time lying on the floor, and the fact that she was mostly facing him from her right side so that she could use her dominant hand to change bandages and all that stuff meant he hadn’t really seen her left. /Spike’s side./

“…You’d be like a red flag out there to all those hungry demons looking for a snack.” He shifted uncomfortably, voice intensifying, eyes darkening to catch hers with that old concern-fear-worry she had loved so fiercely in her younger years. “You _can’t_ leave. Not right now. There are petty demon lords setting themselves up all over the city, taking territory…”

She made a face. “At some point I’m gonna have to take my chances.” She hated that she felt so guilty about that. After all, he could go back into the glowing thingy—the ‘stasis column’—anytime to finish up this spell-induced healing process, and he’d be okay with the dragon to protect him and fetch him things. She could set him up really well, make sure he and the dragon were all ready to go, check in on them regularly… But she seriously needed to find Spike. 

Like, _needed_ to.

Angel’s face twisted as if that was the worst idea he had ever heard. “W…" He caught her wince, switched it up. "My ghost’s told me a few things. I wasn’t going to tell you, but… I’ve heard about Spike.”

Her heart thrilled, and she leapt to her feet. “Is he okay? Wait.” She glared down at him, hands on her hips. “If you’ve heard something, why haven’t you told me?” /And just how much do you actually talk to this ghost of yours when I’m not around?/ Not that she wasn't glad to miss those meetings.

Angel looked away, like he regretted what he was about to tell her. “He’s become one of them. The Demon Lord of Beverly Hills.”   
  
She noticed that he had totally ignored the last question. Still, the import of what he had imparted took precedence. It took her a minute to sort it out, but then a broad smile struck her lips. /Oh, wow. You _would_ land on your feet./ She could see it now; her Spike, lounging around somewhere like a king, just demoning it up…

“You can’t trust him,” Angel was saying, watching her with serious eyes. “Word on the street is he’s got a whole harem of demon girls, like a complete playboy. That he’s taking human prisoners…”

She had to admit that the ‘whole harem of demon girls’ part gave her a little bit of pause, but really, it had to be a front if it was true. And the rest… She snorted in laughter. Sometimes Angel could be so dense. “You’ve gotta know there’s an angle. Spike would no more do that now than he would go back to hunting. He’s probably helping them. Using the playboy demon lord thing as cover to be a safehouse, or…” /It would totally be your style, wouldn’t it? To act cooler than you really are in front of the other demons so that no one knew how smooshy you really are under the surface…/

Angel was shaking his head grimly. “You and I both saw him in the battle. I don’t know if the spell that put his soul back was faulty, or if it was something the amulet did to him or what, but he let his demon back out full force. What if he never got it back under control? What if he’s been lying the entire time he’s been out here in LA, and the soul’s been gone?” Dark eyes pinned hers, intent. “You don’t know how he’s acted out here. Definitely not like a vamp with a soul. Not a whole heck of a lot different than he used to when he was in my nest as an uppity fledgling…”

/Oh for God’s sake; _seriously?/_ Was Angel really trying to undermine her with Spike right now? And _why?_ /I thought you two have been working together all year? That you were _allies!_/ “Okay. One, the soul’s still there. However he’s been acting around you probably has a lot to do with the fact that you guys have some seriously rancid history. I don’t know much of it and I probably don’t wanna know, but I can tell that from a mile off. You ever think of that, Angel? That you just bring out the worst in him?”

Angel jerked back a little, then winced as the tiny motion jarred his healing spine. And the metaphorical defenses came back up in his eyes. “Two,” she pressed on without pause, “even if he _had_ lost it, it wouldn’t change anything for me.” That earned her a stare of stunned horror. “And three, yes, he did let his demon out to play. Because I _asked_ him to. Told him to have fun, because he fights better that way, and I _missed_ his demon.” Angel jerked again at that, clearly stunned, but she ignored him to push on blandly. “But you wouldn’t understand that, because your demon hates me and wants to torture and kill me.” This time he winced not from physical pain but from the lash of memory. She ignored him to shake her head grimly. “His _loves_ me, Angel, would rather kill _himself_ than ever hurt me again, so I know I can trust him.”

She should have expected the lash to come back, she supposed. A ricochet. “Oh, right. So you think, what? That he’s not gonna get into too much trouble, or backslide, because he’s going to try to _impress_ you?”

It was really, really bad form to punch a guy with a broken back, right? 

Pushing away, Buffy came to her feet. It was better than resorting to violence on a helpless—and currently human—being, even if he really, really kind of deserved it right now. “I think,” Buffy managed tightly, “you missed the part where he went to get the soul for me…” /God; you were _there_ for that conversation, even if I’m never in a million years gonna tell you _why_ he did it. “Or the part where he was fighting at my side _without_ the soul for years…”

“If I’d’ve known how long he was there, you for damn sure know I’d’ve had something to say about it, Buffy…”

Something in her flared, and she whirled. “And I’d have told you to go back to LA! Sunnydale was _mine_, and what and who I did there was none of your damn business! Just like you in LA!” 

He winced, flinching away from her, which, alright, maybe that was a low blow, but it kind of felt good to say it finally. Letting out a slow breath, Buffy forced herself back to station-keeping. “Spike isn’t doing anything to impress me anymore, or get in my pants, okay? Even his demon-side cares about doing the right thing, in his own way, as long as he can figure out what that is. About saving the world…” Which he had since done, more than once, dammit. She felt that little smile touch her lips again. “Because snacks and more things to kill.” /‘_Little Happy Meals with legs…’ _And that one soccer team, even though at the time I didn’t even know what you were talking about./ “He never cared too much _what_ he got to kill as long as he got to kill _something_, so you know; fighting baddies with me or killing humans, whatever. Long as the tummy’s full and he gets, how would he put it? ‘A spot of murder in’ here and there, he’s good.” 

Angel winced again, this time on behalf of the absent Spike; and yeah, she knew her impression of her guy was awful, but whatever. What Spike didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. “And he cares that _I_ care, which is more important. Which is not as much about impressing me, Angel, as it is figuring out how to do it right. Which you’d get if your demon ever cared about doing anything right…” She eyed her ex steadily. “But Angelus is all about doing it as wrong as possible, isn’t he?”

Another guilty flinch from her ex.

“Also, you know, soul,” she pushed on, and shrugged, returning to squat next to the broken man. “Yeah, how he deals with any moment kind of still depends on his mood, but he’s not going to go back to killing. He’d have to give up everything; not just in my eyes, but also in his own, to go back to that life. He wouldn’t do that just to snack on a bunch of messed-up refugees…”

“Buffy, you don’t know how powerful it is. Fear-scent… When your demon is in charge…”

She exhaled heavily and struggled with the urge to slam his fragile fingers in the closest tome, since they were an unbroken part of him. Or, you know, go punch a wall. “No. He won’t do that,” she reminded the dope patiently. “He’d be haunted by it. You of all people should know, the soul has to live with what the demon does.” She shrugged and tossed a book aside onto the pile. “And his demon always has to live with knowing what I’d want. Because he loves me.” She felt the little smile crease her lips once more. “He’s a good guy, at heart. A little slow and dumb sometimes, and he’s only learned to have a conscience by trial and error… but he’s more or less a good man these days, that demon.”

Angel was staring at her like she was a psycho. “It was _you,”_ he breathed. “You brought some spell with you or… You’ve released him somehow. He’s…” Dark eyes, once beloved, now incredibly dramatic on hers. “Buffy, he’s a soulless monster.”

/_Really?_ After the conversation we just had about all this before we went to hell?/

It took her maybe almost a full minute of studying her ex before she finally put it together. /Oh. This isn’t about Spike at all, is it? All this, ‘What if he never got it back under control?’ and ‘He’s a soulless monster’ crap… It’s about _you_./ 

It was a stunning realization. /You’re _scared_ of your demon, aren’t you. Scared to death, as scared as everyone else is. Because… he hurt you, just like he hurt everyone else./ She’d been right about why Angel was who he was, but she hadn’t fully _understood_ it until this moment; how really deep it went. /He terrorized you, didn’t he? The human parts of you? Because they made him _feel_, and he _hated_ that; just like as he hated _me_ for making him feel./ It was a revelation. /Liam’s very existence had intimidated Angelus, but Angelus couldn't kill Liam. He needed Liam to survive. /So he did to you, for all those hundreds of years, what he did to me for those few months… God, what a thought; till you almost didn’t recognize yourself, right? Till you had to pretty much become someone else; to deal./ 

It was heady to finally understand; and painful. Painful to realize, finally, just how very broken her first love truly was. And scary, how close she might have come to doing the same to herself, after her own death. /If you pretend to be someone else long enough, to forget the pain, if you lie to yourself enough…/ 

It was why Angel wasn’t Liam! Why he hid, why… /Why you stay still, why you’re so afraid… and why Spike never is. Spike changed William; but William _loved_ it, embraced it… and they never hurt each other./ The only people who ever hurt them were outside them. /You, Dru, me; but they keep on, because they both have that zest for life. William does it with quiet stuff like poetry, Spike does it by just living balls-out, but they both love the world./ They just had different poetry for the same love. And Spike… /He only shows me all of it now; those parts of himself he couldn’t before, because I used to be one of those outside things. The real demons. And because his William-ness slows him down enough to see it when he hurts others; even himself. But he never hid his feelings from the demon, because the demon didn’t hate him for it like yours did. He hid them from me, because _I _would’ve hurt him. Because I _did,_ before. Because Dru did, and Angelus did. Everyone did. The demon has always _protected_ William, though./

/And Angelus.../

Angelus had always been at war within himself. Spike’s demon worked _with_ the man he used to be, because he owed the human side of him for his personality, his life. Spike was a whole person because his demon and his man had always worked well together, always accepted that they owed each _other_ their existence. /But you…/

Angelus had never been able to feel emotions. Liam could, if poorly. They had been a terrible match. They had hated each other from the start, even as they had needed each other. Resented each other, because… /Because an infant vampire doesn’t know anything when it comes here, does it? It’s all spanking new, right? They come here from some demon-dimension where everything works by different rules?/ God, it all made sense to her now. /So if it’s gonna survive this world it needs to learn from the human it takes over. How to work the body, how to work the world. And with the human comes… everything. The mind. Any talents, any faults, any damage, any passions… That’s why the demon considers itself the same person… because it takes on the human’s personality; mixes it with its own./ 

Food for thought, and it gave her pause, because surely the demon had some inherent traits of its own to bring to the table aside from impulsiveness, a whole truckload of instinct, and crazy senses. /Or, like, whatever one it ends up developing, because doesn’t a baby kind of get its personality from nature and nurture all mixed together?/ 

It explained why Angelus had slaughtered his whole family upon his rebirth; to drive away any emotional connections Liam might have felt to the world. Probably he had gotten the human side of himself to join in out of revenge for whatever slights humans always had with their families. But inside, where Liam would still have loved them… Angelus would have hated that. Despised any grief, any lingering remorse; and punished the humanity in him for it until he destroyed it. 

And if Angelus had needed Liam, Liam had needed Angelus too. As with all vampires, the only way the remaining bits of the human could survive at all was if they came into some kind of agreement with the lodger who had taken up residence inside their body. But in this case it had been a hostile takeover. No quarter. His two sides had been interdependent, but they hadn’t wanted to share their body, and in the end they had fractured under the constant tug-of-war for control over his psyche. Angelus had destroyed all but a few shreds of Liam; kept what it wanted of the persona, but left whatever discarded remained of human Liam as some wailing wreck. The cracks had probably begun from the very moment a completely sociopathic demon had taken over a human who had already been, she suspected, probably saddled with his own issues with love or acceptance or whatever. In retrospect, it was kind of easy to tell that her ex had some issues in that department, but either way a demon like that was never going to be able to offer their human side the slightest bit of acceptance. 

As vampires went, Angelus was about as full-on demon as they came. Which of course meant that once the curse had put what was left of Liam back in the driver’s seat, there hadn’t been enough of a functional person to drive the wreck. Not after two hundred years of Angelus’ abusive machinations. A buffering personality had had to be built from the quivering shards. /But who is Angel made up of, then?/ Buffy had never really asked herself that question. Something self-hating, self-denying; something put in place to keep Angelus in check in tandem with the curse. Something ready to insist that it was _different._ /And you've been a work in progress ever since, I guess, till the day we met. And probably after./ 

It made sense that Angel would be terrified of the very idea of letting the demon out, for any vamp. /Because to him, they’re all like Angelus. Raging at being held prisoner; starving, full of terrible urges, and kept under wraps as much by his own will as by his curse./ 

It was a revelation to recognize that her ex feared being freed in the same way everybody else feared it. Feared being under the control of a terrifying, unfeeling monster who would force him to participate in terrible crimes that he would have to _feel_. /You don’t get it, do you Angel. It’s different with Spike, because it was a _good_ match. That it was and still is a _freeing_ experience for him, not a cage. Even now, as long as his soul doesn’t have to participate in anything that makes him feel like he’s murdering at… what’s the term? Cross-purposes or whatever. Pitting his human side against his demon side or vice-versa, he can still enjoy his whole existence without the kind of internal struggle you have to live with every day./

She kind of pitied Angel, actually. He’d gotten a really crappy demon. It rode all over him till it was dragging him, exhausted, flayed, half-dead. For him… the soul was a choke-chain on a true monster.

Spike, though? He’d long since learned to ride demon and human in tandem. Whichever side of him held the reins at the moment, they held one another to the same gait. It never seemed to matter all that much to him if it was soul or demon holding him in tandem yoke. He adapted. He surpassed. He found a way. 

And Buffy desperately loved him for it. “No,” she murmured softly, “he’s a hybrid being who loves with his whole heart and just wants to have fun. Revel in the carnage, and live life to its fullest. As long as he has an outlet for his passions, he’s fine.” She shot her ex a sad little glance. “And I’m a part of that, Angel; one of his outlets, so at some point you’re going to have to forgive me and let me go.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then seemed to just… let it go as a conversational topic. “But you’ll stay till I’m better, right?”

She sighed gustily. /Apparently we’re agreeing to disagree about Spike? “I’ll stay for a little while longer, if what you say is true and he’s alright.” It was a relief to know her guy was okay, though Angel could have told her sooner what he knew. Another black mark to put in his book. /Probably he thought he was sparing me bad news. Why does he always do that? Try to protect me? I’m not a little high school girl anymore./

It was weirdly easier to get frustrated with Angel nowadays than it had been before Spike had taken over the blood-bond… and after she had died.

Everything had changed after she had died. It kind of made her wonder how much of the bond had already been snapped by that event. Her meeting with him after her resurrection had been strained, too, and… she hadn’t liked how he had tried to compare himself to Spike that night after Caleb. It had seemed so… juvenile.

As if he could read her mind, he tried to flash some charm back at her. “Good. Because I’m thinking we should take this time to get to know each other again.” He struggled a little to re-situate himself a little more comfortably against the small cushions that lay to either side of his face to keep his head stable, watching her earnestly. “I know you don’t really trust me anymore, what with the Wolfram and Hart stuff…”

Buffy found herself staring at him in chagrin. He couldn’t actually be trying to use his literal paralysis to get close to her again right now, could he? 

This had to be a misread, or a joke. He knew she was with Spike, what was _wrong_ with him?

“…But Buffy, you’ve got to understand, that was all a ploy to get inside so I could destroy the Senior Partners from within. If you could just trust that I’m still the guy you loved before, then maybe…” 

Wow. Not a misread, or a joke, and this could _not_ be happening. It didn’t even make _sense_ that he would be doing this right now. She couldn’t even think of an explanation, except maybe…

Could he be doing this because she was with Spike? Because it was kind of like when he had started feeling her out again, relationship-wise right before they’d fought The First, after years of practically no contact, and right after his… girlfriend? was in a coma. Which… was that just because he’d smelled Spike on her? Because the timing of that was just so _weird_, now that she thought about the Cordelia thing; like he’d just been lonely, or looking for some kind of… _insurance_ or something. 

/Not to _mention_ that you’ve spent every not-completely-waking-moment since then talking to yourself about that very specific other woman. Not that I’m not glad you’re, you know, otherwise focused, now, but it just makes this whole thing so bizarre!/ “You _cannot_ be serious.”

“What? I’m human now. I mean, I’ve essentially Shanshu’d. By accident, but… I’ll be back to myself soon. Good as new. We’ll get out of here someday, and…”

She could only stare at him for a long minute and contemplate whether he had actually lost his mind from the pain. Maybe he had. “Angel, you have _got_ to be kidding me. I mean…” She had to laugh at the irony of it. “Yeah, a few years ago I’d’ve wanted nothing more than for you to turn human so I could be with you, but…” She shook her head. “I feel like I don’t even _know_ you anymore, sometimes. You lie to me, you move on to Cordelia but keep me on the hook just in case…”

“Buffy, I’d _never_…”

She held up a hand to forestall him, ire starting to rise inside her. “You didn’t tell me about Spike; that he was alive then, or that he’s okay now. I consider that a betrayal.” At his stricken look she jerked her eyes away.

“It’s not like he called you himself,” Angel muttered truculently. “There _were_ phones all over the place.”

Buffy bit her lip. /Oh, low blow./ Did he _want_ to hurt her? 

Curling her hands into fists, she fought a now seriously vicious urge to punch him, if only because he was the one speaking words she had tried not to think of for a while now. Hot tears flooded her eyes unbidden. She blinked them back with an effort. /Don’t _even_ try to undermine… Not _now_. Not when…/ Did he think this was some kind of… trump card, or… “If anyone knows what it’s like to come back from the dead and be all screwed up over it, it’s me. He gets a pass. You don’t.” God, she was shaking with rage; so much it sickened her. She might vomit, actually, and had to fight down that core of misplaced wrath. “You didn’t like what we were, fine; but it _wasn’t_ your call. He was one of my people. I _deserved_ to know.” She spat it, voice vibrating with fury. “You betrayed me.”

“Buffy…”

Her only excuse for her next words were that he had hurt her—had used Spike, a lover she had thought dead, to do it—and dammit, she wanted to hit him back. “You _know_ if Cordelia was still alive I would have heard about him being here with you right away.” That girl had never taken orders from anyone. Whatever the rest of his crew had thought about the whole apparent gag-order over Spike’s being alive, Cordy would have called her up right away. ‘Hey, by the way, Buffy? Vamp number two? Not so dead. Just thought you should know.’

Angel’s reaction was immediate. “Don’t talk to me about Cordy to me. Just… Don’t.” 

And there it was. The pain on his face, in his voice… They clouded his everything; far more than his injuries had. 

She knew him well enough, still, to read him like a book. Always had. It was true. Angel and Cordelia had had something. Something… big. Profound. Profound, maybe, as what she had with Spike, if maybe less confusing, to judge by his clenched fists, the agony in his eyes and voice. 

She was surprised to find that though she didn’t get it, she was oddly unaffected by it. You would think she would be; disturbed by the idea of him having so thoroughly moved on. But right now she just felt tired… and oddly relieved to have left the question of his soul and possible future soullessness in someone else’s hands besides her own for a change. 

Still. That just made it even more inexplicable. Because even though he was here talking to Cordy all the time in his fever, he was still half-coming on to her right now, trying to keep her here for himself when he knew Buffy was with Spike… and just after Cordy was out of the picture last year he had come over to try to fit himself back into her life before her battle with the Turok-Han; which was… what even? What was she, a consolation prize? A backup plan for him in case he Shanshu’d or whatever? 

It was like he had been trying to get her to tell him she would still choose him over Spike, if the circumstances were right or whatever; like he hadn’t heard a thing she had said to the guy before they’d come here, like she wasn’t allowed to move on even though he _totally_ had, which just…

/Who would you have picked, between us, if Cordy had lived?/

Not that it mattered who _he_ would have chosen. Not anymore. Buffy had, and Angel needed to accept it. /You’re not who I need anymore; not human, not vampire. Either way…/ But the only way he was going to accept it was… if he found out she had gone beyond his ‘touch’.

Lifting her fingers to her new, barely-there bite-scar, she brushed the marks slightly. Angel would know it wasn’t a feeding bite. That Spike would most definitely have claimed her, if she had even once permitted him to have a sip. “How about we make a deal, Angel,” she told him softly. “I won’t talk about Cordy if you don’t talk to me about Spike, okay?”

He blinked at her, eyes following her movement. “I… Buffy, what are you doing?”

She eyed him for a moment, wondering if it would be too cruel right now to let him know that what had been between them was gone forever. As a human he couldn’t know. Couldn’t smell Spike’s claim or sense the change any more than he could lean on the thing to push her around; though he’d been doing a damn fine job of pushing her buttons without it these last couple of weeks, and about time she admitted it to herself. And since it wasn’t something he could know right now by smell or sense, it was something she should tell him. After all, and she had just flared up at him for not telling her something pertinent to the overall picture. 

It would be rude of her not to follow her own rules, right? “It might not matter anymore, since you’re human now, but your blood-bond with me is gone.”

His response was immediate. He tried to shoot up onto his elbows. Jolted his healing back like an idiot, groaned, and subsided back to the floor, moaning. But his eyes never closed, filling with horror as they fixed on the left side of her neck. “You let him…” He sounded like it was his worst nightmare come true. 

“I told you I’d be able to find him,” she answered a little sadly.

Angel closed his eyes and groaned again, this time from a far more metaphysical pain. “Oh, God, Buffy, why did you do that? You can’t trust him! Spike isn’t…”

She tightened her lips, let the one word slip out between her teeth. “You?”

He stared, stunned into silence by her flat delivery. “I was going to say someone you can trust to… To…”

“Well, for one thing,” she interrupted, quiet and sad, “he made it feel very good. And he came nowhere near draining me. Which, to be fair, I know wasn’t your fault, since you were dying, but…” She didn’t need to say it to let him know that of the two experiences, he had suffered by comparison.

He grimaced and looked away. “I can only say I’m sorry about that so many times.”

“I know.” She shook her head, dismissing it. “The past is the past, Angel, okay? I was your girl… in another life. But we’ve both moved on. You can’t expect me to wait when you didn’t, right?”

A small, pained noise.

“Especially,” she whispered, “when we both know it was something that could never happen…”

“I’m human now,” he pointed out, a little pathetically from where he lay broken on the corporate carpet of an evil law firm.

“Yeah,” she answered him sadly. “And maybe someday you’ll do this Shanshu thing. And maybe life will be wonderful for you when you do. But…” She trailed off, unable to say it flat out. And let the silence speak the words for her.

Their time had passed. 

He percolated on that for a minute, then, “It wasn’t an accident, was it? Or a spur-of-the moment thing. He didn’t… take advantage of you, or…”

She scoffed. “I could throw Spike off like a fly if I wanted to.” /Unless I’m hurt. And he’ll never come at me like that again unless he knows he has my full consent. Soul or no soul. _Ever_./ She would never for a moment doubt that. 

She had seen the sudden horror and the self-loathing in his unsouled eyes. She _knew_.

Angel looked down at his own chest, gaze distant and pained. He had heard the unspoken corollary. She had _wanted_ it when Spike had bitten her. She had _invited_ it. “You really meant it, didn’t you?” he whispered. 

Her fingers found her neck again, touched the two tiny puncture marks; this time sans even the faintest ring of tooth impressions. She knew what he meant. All of it. “Yeah, I did.”

“And you know… what it means.”

She didn’t have to clarify what he was actually asking. He wanted to know if Spike had given her the fine print; the legalese that he, Angel, had not. /Yes, I know what it meant when I did it. For us… and for you and me./

She kept her gaze on his, unblinking, until he had the grace to look away. Because they both knew he had never given her the 411 to which she had been entitled, once upon a time. /Just another way to protect me? Your sweet, unassuming little girlfriend?/ It felt grating, now.

“You know that…. That it’s permanent.” It wasn’t a question this time.

He was asking if she had known that it would permanently remove his mark from her. Their twisted, attenuated bond. /The one I never even knew was there, because you didn't bother to tell me./ 

She shot him an even look, fought down the spur of anger that wanted to climb into her throat. “Angel… don’t you think it’s about time that we moved on? You’ve had other loves. I have mine. I’m sorry yours died… but mine hasn’t.” She drew in a deep breath. “And I’d like to keep it that way. If I can.”

He closed his eyes, aware as no other could be that he couldn’t keep her there if another’s bond was calling to her. When he spoke again, she could see defeat etched over every inch of his frame, sinking him down in a way even his pain had not done. “I’m… probably okay for you to go now,” he breathed. “I think the spell is about half-done.” He closed his eyes grimly. “Another week in the stasis column should do it. And I’ll have the dragon to protect me till I can protect myself. I’ll be fine.”

Buffy stared at him in surprise, thoroughly thrown. “What?”

“It’s working,” he admitted softly. “Slowly but surely. I think being out here moving around is slowing it down, but I wanted to be with you. Keep you safe here, have us get to know each other again…” 

“Keep me away from Spike?” she demanded sharply, almost afraid to hear the answer… and was floored when he didn’t immediately refute the assertion. 

He just looked… tired. “If I’m in the stasis spell I doubt it’ll take as long to finish up.” His eyes were no longer on hers.

Hardcore, open fury was a new emotion for her when it came to Angel… but she was feeling it now. It pushed her to her feet, and right now she was so not trusting herself to speak. She had to just… focus on acting. On movement.

She swung around to grab a couple of water bottles. Shoved them into the shoulder bag she had scrounged for her building-wide ‘patrols’. Shoved some scraps of food in there too, in sharp, angry movements. Turned to go without another word.

“At least take the dragon. It’ll make the journey safer than going overland again, and you can quarter for Spike’s… accommodations easier that way.”

And just with that generous offer… he redeemed himself slightly. “Thank you.” She managed it tightly, hurt; but she managed it, and moved to Cordelia. Patted the scaly neck and, when it slithered its head around to regard her solemnly, swung aboard. “I’ll send your dragon back as soon as I can.” /Though I’m not sure anymore that I can trust myself to check in on you./

He didn’t answer. But then, she hadn’t expected him to.

***  
  
  
  
  
  
chant with me. ONE, TWO, THREE... "MANIPULATIVE ASS!"  
  
okay. Now that we have that out of our systems, let us look fwd to some nice reunionage in the next chapter. Though, of course, not without some kerfuffle, because, you know, two weeks, and when does Angel _not_ cause problems for our kids?


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so... I worked at it and worked at it, and there's just nowhere to break up this reunion chapter. When I wrote this fic, I was paying literally zero attention to word-count; I just let the chapters fall out of my fingers however they wanted to. I've been able to make a few artificial breaks in some here and there, but this one... not so much. So... It's hella long. But, well... I'm hoping y'all will forgive me, because reunionage long time coming. 
> 
> I didn't want this one to be so damn long because the next several chapters are long as hell in similar vein... but I figured it would be easier to beg for forgiveness when your long-as-hell chapters were almost one hundred percent smut (no one seems to complain when you write super-long smut chapters, lol), but, well. We'll see.

Buffy followed the feel of her… Well, her mate, she supposed, as she coursed west and slightly north over the burning city. The bond drew her on, tightening up and reeling her in with an ever-increasing expectation that felt almost like a building orgasm the closer she drew to Beverly Hills. It made her jittery, made her want to fight, to explode…

She had to focus, increasingly, on the wreckage of the city below her to keep from leaping off the back of the dragon. The land of her birth looked… well, like hell as she looked over the frighteningly altered landscape from the shoulders of the swift-moving creature. 

‘Cordelia’ seemed intelligent and responsive as they flew along, avoiding other airborne menaces both alive and flaming and tilting for her to get a look at the devastation below them every time Buffy leaned over to get a closer look at some building with an octopus-demon clinging to the side of it or a crater in an avenue with a gang of who-knew-what kind of creatures gathered around it, stabbing some other hapless thing with spears.

This dimension was major with the suckage.

And she had been here so _long_. Everything that was going to happen with her people and the Scourge had probably long since happened, for better or worse. She had been fretting about that, too, while she was with Angel; enough that it had left her edgy as heck, but it wasn’t like she could do anything about it. She just had to pray that they were all okay. That her warning had come in time and that those inhuman bastards hadn’t cleaned out the new site in Scotland and then headed straight to St. Petersburg to go after Giles and his bunch, or to Rome and then the Azores, then Cleveland and Robin Wood...

It was a balm to her antsy soul how much faster she covered the ground as the crow—uh, dragon—flew than when darting and slogging and tussling her way across the burning city on foot. They got to Sunset Boulevard in a few minutes, covering ground it had taken her hours to cross before, by dint of blood and sweat and stress. (It was also a lot nicer covering that ground from this far away, where she couldn’t hear all the screaming.) Once over their last known location, the dusty triangle that was all that remained of Will Rogers Memorial Park, she patted Cordy’s shoulder to signal her to circle, then closed her eyes and reached out, feeling for Spike. Tried to zero in, wondering just where a ‘demon lord’ would fort up around here. 

And could swear the bond was dragging her just about straight downward. Her blood was literally _singing_; the way it had used to do whenever Angel got closer, but… more physical. Perking along every limb like she had joyous little soda bubbles running along under her skin, pulling her eyes along a line of march…

There. Almost directly below them there was a large structure. A hotel or something… She couldn’t quite place it in her mental map of the area from this bizarre overhead angle, especially since she hadn’t exactly been a driver when she’d lived in LA. “That one,” she told the dragon firmly, and patted her neck. “It’s the only thing big enough nearby.”

She swore Cordelia nodded before beginning to spiral downward toward the sort of quadrangle made by the two wide wings of the structure. 

They landed in between the center building and a sort of huge, round, gazebo-looking deal, only bigger, attached to it by a walkway, which was where Buffy half slid, half tumbled off. She felt kind of stiff from the long ride astride, clenching without moving, her skin chafed my rough scales. Even Slayer-muscles weren’t complete proof against that much enforced stillness and single-use-type exertion for long periods against g-forces and swerving and stuff. A regular person would probably have fallen off halfway, without some kind of saddle. /Not used to riding horses, much less dragons./ A rough scale caught on her now-torn slacks, making her stumble on the dismount, and she righted herself by dint of her preternatural balance… and looked up just in time to see a flash of white-blond hair and cheekbones and wine-red shirt flying at her.

And then she was in his arms, and he felt like home; and holy crap he smelled good. Less smoke than usual, no leather. /No duster/ her brain inanely reminded her, and she felt a pang for it. But Spike smell, and that was all she needed to know this was real; and she never wanted him to let go. Actually, she was kind of inspired to climb right up into him right now, and build a nest in his body, and…

“BuffyBuffyBuffy,” he chanted, face in her hair, and his arms were wrapped around her so tight that she almost couldn’t breathe, and she was holding him as tightly, and okay, so she was crying a little, so shoot her; but the relief was real.

She really wasn’t sure who started the kissing first, but then they had always been better at showing how they felt with their bodies, wordlessly. She because she was not large with the articulate, and he because his much more articulate self tended to strangle into wordlessness whenever she was around; and his hands were on her face, and they were kissing like the world was ending and it was the only thing left to do, and oh my god, she had missed him so _badly_. “I was so… worried about you,” she managed, gasps interspersed between the harried, inelegant meetings of mouths too overwhelmed for finesse.

“Bloody Christ, Slayer!” More insane kisses, and he was buried in her neck, sniffing long and deep, probably doing some vampire thing, and it was entirely unfair that he was taking his mouth away. “You had me clean off my trolley; you with your blood telling me you’re alright, but no way to be sure, and _weeks_…” It was half-moan, half-growl, keened into the juncture of neck and shoulder, and oh. He was sniffing her bite-scar. 

/The smell of _us_./ And it was _doing_ things to his body, that scent. He was unbelievably hard against her belly, and yet he was also trembling so that she thought maybe he might just shake apart. Not that it wasn’t also giving her a little zing, as well, now that she was paying attention; his cool breath tickling over the sensitive spot, his lips brushing. It made things inside her curl up and jump and tremble. But not as hard as he was.

She slipped a hand free of his grip to lay it lightly on the back of his neck, aware from the ridged feel of his face against her skin that he had vamped. “I’m okay,” she told him gently. “I’m here.”

“Where the fuck have you _been?”_ he lisped, still growling. “Sodding Christ, Buffy…”

She opened her mouth to answer, but before she could get a word out he was up and staring into her with golden eyes blazing, his body taut with a terrible need. “Never mind. To hell with it. You want to go to bed with the demon lord of Beverly Hills?”

She kept her eyes steady on his as she answered quite firmly. “You bet your ass.”

He caught her hand and turned promptly to pull her toward the interior of the hotel. “Go now,” he informed her urgently. “Catch up later.”

The pent-up energy of the last couple of weeks thought this was a fantastic idea. The way he felt against her set everything in her humming like a nuclear power plant. “Sounds like a plan.” 

His eyes, as he swung back to grin at her, still in full game face, were amber and feral and full of longing need. And then, in an instant, they changed. Lifted to take in the dragon behind her. “That Angel’s beast?”

She glanced back at Cordelia. “Yeah. Oh, I should probably send it home.” She twisted half back to wave at the dragon-demon. “Go ahead back, Cordy. He needs you. And thank you!”

With a happy sound and, Buffy could swear, another little nod, the large beast turned and lumbered away to make an awkward little hop-skip, caught the edge of the gazebo roof, and used it to launch herself heavily into the air. With one voluminous downsweep that almost caught the ground beneath its pinions and kicked up huge, twin swirls of dust from the denuded former garden area, it took flight and, regaining its elegance, arced over the roofs of the buildings to arrow off back toward Downtown. 

Turning back to her guy, Buffy was startled to find him regarding her now with all vestiges of the heat that had once been in his eyes now gone, along with his game face. He had a mask over his expressions now; the one he had worn all too often when she had somehow wounded him without even trying. William’s face; vulnerable and covered over only with the thin, armored veneer of sneers and insolence that was Spike. “What?” she demanded, taken aback.

“You were with Angel?”

It took her a sec to figure out what the problem was. /Oh for God’s sake/ was followed very swiftly by, /Huh, I guess that ‘cleansing’ spell really _does_ work, or we’d be having this conversation right off the bat./ “Yeah. I got there by following you. Got there right after you, actually, but then I couldn’t just _leave_ him like that, could I…”

“Why not? I did.”

Her mouth tightened. “I noticed. But I couldn’t.” 

His hand released hers to drop to his side. “I see.”

She was already starting to feel very tired. “Are you kidding me right now, with this?”

Rage boiled up into his voice, on preset. “Do you know what we were going through, up here, while you were down there coddling Peaches? I coulda used your help! And I’m sure he was enjoying every minute of getting it from your hands instead!”

She could tear out her hair. Really she could. Or punch him in the face. She really, really missed the days when she could just punch him in the face when she was mad at him. It was a simpler time. 

Maybe he did too. He was practically goading her into it, and the belligerent look on his stupid mug almost made her do it… but it was also the thing that stayed her hand, made her clench her fists to her sides with supreme effort. 

Instead she walked away for a moment and just stood facing out toward the big round structure in the center of the quadrangle, breathing hard. Counted down from ten. Tried to tell herself all the myriad reasons she had come back for this man. Why her life was so much better with him in it, even though right now it seemed like the dumbest idea in the world; a stupid idea that had gotten her stuck in a stupid hell dimension with a stupid vampire she should be punching, and... 

“He’s human again.”

She whirled back, confused and still on the verge of violence. “Hence the broken bones,” she spat, truly at her wits’ end. “Spike, what…”

She really was pissed off, to have missed the implications he was throwing at her. 

“So. Didn’t take much to make you stay. Probably batted the old puppy dog eyes at you and you fell for the routine just like you always do. Wipe his bum for him too, did you?”

Just what? “Spike, he was helpless. He needed me!” What even was his trauma right now?

“Yeah? And I’m sure the fact that you don’t have to worry about Angelus making an appearance anymore had nothing to do with it!”

It hit her, finally and extremely belatedly, just what the hell he was getting at. And holy fuck, did it make her furious. She ripped her satchel of supplies off her shoulder and threw it to the ground, so livid that she was sure she was going to swing it at his idiot head. Maybe even take it off for him. “Oh, you are the absolute limit, do you know that? _Both_ of you! Him for keeping me there when he didn’t need me anymore so _you_ couldn’t have me, and _you_ for thinking I’d leave him like that when he _did!_ And for not trusting me with him when you know for a fact that I’m with _you_ now; though at the moment I can’t for the _life_ of me remember why!” He flinched, but her dander was well and truly up, and she barreled on without a single thought for the damage her words might do. “What, do you think I’d jump his bones the second he turned human, no matter what you and I just did and what we are to each other?” Another flinch. “All two hundred and six _broken_ ones? With your bite running through me every second so that I spend every moment of every day worried stiff about you?” A third wince. “Yeah,” she finished off brusquely, ire finally spent. “I almost couldn’t wait till you were gone, as a matter of fact. Thanks for getting out of there so I could ride the only bone he had left that wasn’t…”

A pale hand shot up to stop her. “Alright, Buffy! Just sodding stop!” He closed his eyes and sagged against the nearest dead tree, looking completely undone. “Bloody buggering Christ, Slayer. I’m sorry. I just…”

“You better be,” she hissed. “You absolute asshole. Do you know how much I’ve _worried_ about you? And to have him back there talking to me the whole time about how ‘it’s not safe for me to cross back on my own’… And then to find out the spell I did to heal him actually _worked_, and he’s been getting better this whole time and I could’ve come back a _week_ ago…”

“Yeah,” Spike answered ruefully, and flicked his fingers like he really wanted a cigarette. Scrubbed one hand ruefully through his hair, disrupting its carefully-organized state. “That sounds like Angel. He called me over at first to get me away from you. Didn’t expect you to follow, but I guess that was a nice bonus for him, yeah?”

She still couldn’t believe it of him. She’d heard it from the source, and yet…

Putting aside Angel, though, what the hell was going on with _Spike?_ How could he think that she’d just turn around and…

And then she remembered sleeping curled up with him in a deserted house. Stripping herself figuratively naked before him, throughout a long night. Him stripping himself naked the next night to let her know what it had meant to him. And her, telling him in no uncertain terms that it had meant as much to her, as well.

And then turning around to greet Angel with an enthusiastic kiss of gratitude when he’d visited, only an hour or so later. So not what Spike had thought it had meant, with Angel promptly acting like a jealous twelve-year-old when he smelled Spike all over her, but still. From Spike’s perspective, he was probably always going to think that he would forever measure up as second-best in her mind next to a man who had done god alone knew what to him when he’d raised him up in the vamp world, and… And why had it never occurred to her to wonder what that had been like? Being raised by a sociopath like Angelus? Who was, now that she thought about it, also screwing Drusilla the whole time; a woman with whom Spike had also been also in love, and who incidentally was also the cray-cray, mercurial vamp who had sired him, and, just…

Wow. /It might not even be all about us. But the past with Angel… probably doesn’t help much. And what you’ve done to Spike for years, tearing him down every time he’s told you he loves you, and then running to Angel like he’s some kind of god…/

It was going to take him a long time to believe it. /So just breathe, Buffy. Try to remember how insecure you’ve made him about us./

It was that thought that kept her sane enough to face him down calmly, made the part of her that still wanted to strangle him slowly drain away. “I can understand why you’d be a little… uncertain about me and Angel, Spike, with our history, but…” She stretched out with one hand to catch his wrist. “I was kind of hoping that you and I had gotten past _our_ history. At least a little. Enough that you could maybe _trust_ me.”

His eyes opened and he stared at her for a moment brokenly. “It’s not even just that, luv,” he whispered softly. “It’s that… Some things… happened… while you were gone that… maybe you aren’t gonna like…”

/Oh, man…/ “What happened? I know it was something bad. I could feel it. It was driving me crazy. It’s why I knew I had to get back.” When he didn’t answer she moved a little closer, concerned enough by the haunted look in his eyes, the gauntness about his cheekbones, the hunched way he held his body and the uncertainty in the blood-bond that she abruptly forgot all her ire. It was gone as if it had never been. “Spike. Tell me.”

“I didn’t want it to happen,” he told her quietly, and his tones were those of a desperate man. “I was in a sort of a dungeon they’d made up down in the basement of the hotel. ‘The Palace’, Non called it, here. Chained to the wall, yeah?”

She closed her eyes briefly, remembering what Spike had looked like once before, shackled to a stone wall and tormented by The First. “This ‘Non’ is dead?”

“Yeah,” he answered softly.

She digested it for a moment. “How’d she even get you there?”

His lips twisted. “She caught us all right after I got back. She was the demon lord here by virtue of she could drain the life force out of folk. Drained all our people in a moment; save Illyria and me, and Johns…”

/Oh, jeez…/ That mega sucked. All those people…

“Kept Blue in a cage and me down below; to try to parlay with Gunn.” His eyes cut over to hers. “Seems like Charlie-boy’s a vamp now.”

It wrenched something inside her to hear it. “Oh.” Not ‘dead’, then, in the standard way of things. But not the same anymore. 

“Yeah.” He lifted one shoulder and dropped it uneasily. “Anyway, while they had me down there, one of Non’s girls took a fancy to me…”

Buffy tensed. “Oh?”

He cut his eyes away again, looked down. “She wanted me. And in the demon world, there’re only two ways to answer that. You say yeah, or you kill ‘em to say no. Fight ‘em off, at least. And I could hardly do that, chained to a wall. So I thought maybe I could get her to unchain me; use it to get away, like? Escape?” 

His continued confession, made to the dirt between his feet, was having an effect on her. One of ever-increasing horror. She didn’t want to hear anymore, and yet she almost felt like he needed to tell her. /Oh God…/ “Spike… Did she…”

“I couldn’t stop her, Buffy,” he whispered, his voice almost nonexistent. “And in the end she never did unchain me anyway. So I guess I didn’t play my cards right after all.”

Oh. Oh god. The way he was standing, not looking at her… It was like he thought she’d think he cheated, or… 

Oh _god_. He’d been _raped_. And he was scared she’d be _mad_ about it.

Well, she _was_ mad. But not at him. And she needed him to know that, first off. “It doesn’t count,” she whispered around a throat swollen and tight. /Don’t cry. Not now. He needs you not to./ “You know that, right? I mean, that isn’t… sex, right? Whatever _she_ thought it was?”

Something tightened in his face. “She got me off.”

It hurt, yeah, but still. That was just mechanics. He had been violated. He had said no, and someone who had the power over him had come up on him and ignored his ‘no’ and had had her way with him when he was powerless to stop it from happening and…

It hit her like a ton of bricks then, hard and heavy, nearly bringing her to her knees. His voice, telling _her_ ‘No’ in no uncertain terms, only a few years ago. _‘I think you need to leave. Because if I can’t have all of you, then…’_ And her completely ignoring him and just…

Taking what she had wanted from him anyway. Because she had had all the power in that relationship. He could have said all the ‘nos’ in the world. He could have tried to push her off. He could have tried to _throw_ her off, even. But she was, and unless there was an injury or a spell, would always be, stronger than him. She wouldn’t have believed his ‘nos’, because his ‘I love yous’ had been carte blanche to her and she had thought that meant he was her property to do with as she pleased. Because she had treated him like a thing and not a person. She would not have treated his physical protests as such; would simply have slammed his body up against the nearest wall and continued taking what she had wanted from him until she was satisfied, up to and including satisfying herself on his body once she had gotten him sufficiently aroused. She in fact remembered doing exactly that, more than once, when he had not been interested in playing their usual game of violent, abusive sex… and when she hadn’t wanted his tentative attempts at lovemaking. Had repudiated them with more violence, and turned them back on him with sex-as-abuse, and...

Nausea assaulted her, so that she pushed both her fists to her stomach, against the horrible churning there. /I’ve done that. I’ve raped him. And he was a vampire who was raised with that kind of twisted… whatever… / Yes, she remembered exactly how he had meant to get Drusilla to fall in love with him again. /So he just thought that was… That was _love_, and…/ 

/And he still loved me./ When she had used and abused him to make herself feel without actually feeling…

The second assault hit even harder; like a baseball bat to the gut. /Oh God; and then I considered it a completely different thing and a total betrayal when his demon completely lost it and tried to do the same to me to get me to love him the only way he knew how… when I’d already done it to _him _and used it to tell him I didn’t; over and over and over again. Except that wasn’t even the same, because I was actually trying to just get sex, and use him like… like a thing… And you always just wanted me to see you, right? It wasn’t even about sex for you, was it? It was about getting me to feel you, connect with you…/

And he had realized right away. He’d been so sorry that he’d… /And I never even _realized_, much less…/

“Oh, God, Spike…” she whispered, appalled, and held a shaking hand out toward him. Hesitated halfway. “How can you even _be_ with me after…”

He lifted his head. Met her eyes. And she saw that he knew exactly what she meant. That he had been thinking of it. Maybe even when that other girl had been…

Oh god…

“The same way that you can be with _me,_ after,” he answered her, frank as a house falling.

They just stood there, staring at one another while the world came crashing to a halt. Because the difference was, when _he_ had, he had acknowledged his debt to her immediately and with full regret, and began to repay it in the most self-flagellating way he could possibly imagine. Had gone so far, even, as to attempt to murder the part of himself that had done the harm. But in turn she had never even _recognized_, much less acknowledged hers to him, till now. 

She had the hell of a lot to make up for. If she could even get past what she had done to him. He apparently had. Or had he?

His eyes on hers demanded it now; that she get to work on it. Could she?

The first step came today. “Maria still works for me,” he informed her bluntly.

She was shocked to her marrow by that, uttered the first words that came to her mouth. “You didn’t kill her?” It didn’t occur to her until after she heard herself how judgmental they probably sounded. /Double standard much?/

His eyes on hers challenged her assumptions. Challenged her willingness to make restitution, now, by leaving him to decide the fate of another of his rapists. “She proved useful when we overthrew Non. And in her mind she didn’t do anything wrong.” His lips twitched wryly. “I know it doesn’t make any sense in the human world, pet, but in the demon world, what we had was… a nice first date.”

“So she thinks you’re _dating_, now?” Buffy demanded incredulously, because her mouth seriously didn’t know how to quit, and fought not to double her fists. She could get behind the idea that she could start making amends for what she had done to him by, maybe, just _maybe_ not killing this Maria—it would be, after all, pretty petty of her to murder someone for doing to him something she had also done, especially since the murder part was kind of Spike’s prerogative—and, okay. Maybe she could see finding some use in a member of a former court as a sort of info-dump or something. But if the girl still had _feelings_ for him, was confused about their relationship…

“I’ve more or less convinced her,” Spike answered quietly, “that it was a one-time thing. She’s a bit put out about it, since she can’t quite understand why we don’t suit, but she’s agreed to just be friends. Allies with a common goal and all that rot. She’s proved a useful member of the court; helped a lot when we had the big battle here.”

Buffy sighed and bent over to pick up her torn satchel. And hit the reset button on her mouth. “You want to tell me about this big battle? ‘Cause I have to admit I’m pretty confused about how you went from dungeon-guy to demon lord in two weeks.” And, it seemed that she desperately needed context for all that had gone down over here in the Hills while she had been sitting on her duff rubbing salves on Angel’s busted-up bod for fifteen stupid days while Spike had been over here being…

Maybe someday when he was all healed up she would go back and punch Angel in the face for that. A lot; for knowingly keeping her away from her mate while Spike was being… abused, so she wasn’t here to help him. /God… and I let him do it. I fell for it hook, line, and sinker, let him wangle me into it./ Guilt swamped her, and she opened her mouth to say something, though god knew she’d probably say it wrong, that bringing up Angel again might be the worst idea in the universe right now… But she was forestalled by a change in the air between herself and Spike. 

Her vampire had relaxed a little. His arm entered her field of vision as he tentatively poked out an elbow in her direction. “I think it’s a good story, pet. Wish I could get any of it in before court.”

/Okay, save it for later./ They had a tentative peace for now. Best not to screw it up when things were already kind of wobbly. “Court?” she inquired, nonplussed, and absently took the arm; partly to humor him and partly because she wondered if this was some holdover of his Victorian upbringing that was peeping out from behind his hundred-plus demon-y years, and it was only slipping loose right now because he was as rattled as she, wasn’t paying any attention at all to what he was doing. 

They made their way onto a patio full of overturned white tables and white metal chairs with beautiful, leaf-patterned, wrought-iron curlicues and scattered dusty green cushions as he answered. “Yeah. You know, where they bring in the next batch of human refugees, Illyria and I pretend to herd them off to eat them and instead filter them out to the safehouses..."

/Ha, I _knew _it!/

"...We’ve got a nice underground railroad set up between here and this place run by Kate Lockley, this ex-cop friend of Peaches. Human; and a couple of others. Conner herds the people in between since he’s got the daywalker strength…” Then, out of nowhere he clamped his teeth shut tight and looked decidedly awkward. 

Buffy glanced over at him as they stepped under the walkway and in between tall, pinkish arches, wondering at the abrupt cutoff. “Who’s Conner?” He’d said the name with an odd, sardonic lilt to it that made her curious as heck. 

Something rippled through his skin where her hand was threaded through his elbow, and through the blood-bond. “Sodding hell. Guess it doesn’t matter if you know, since we’re all stuck here, now. Not like you’re gonna go running off to tell the Scourge or anyone else who’s his enemy, yeah? Conner is Angel’s son. Technically with dear departed Darla, though he was mostly raised by Peaches and that Cordelia woman, I think…”

Buffy came to a screeching halt and stared at him in shock. “Angel has a… Wha…” That didn’t even _compute;_ so much so that she had to fight for words. _“How?”_

“No idea,” he admitted, and his tone made it clear that he honestly didn’t care. “Dear grandmama always was an odd duck; even for a vamp.” He opened the door to the main part of the hotel for her, expression, as she glanced over at him, clearly anticipatory of her reaction to his latest digs. “Welcome to your home away from home, luv.”

She stared around her, briefly sidetracked from the bizarre conversation about vampires magically managing to make babies… Okay, she had heard via Willow that Darla had somehow come back and gone rampaging around with Drusilla for a while last year, but how in the heck had she managed to get _pregnant?_

Wait; did that mean that she and Angel had… 

Ugh. Just, no. Better to simply let herself be awed by the opulence of the beautiful hotel Spike and Illyria had turned into their joint noble abode. Better not to think at all about Angel, and things he had apparently decided not to tell her about yet _another_ liaison—with his evil sire this time!—while still nitpicking her being with his not-so-evil scion. Definitely best not to remotely consider vampire (?) children (what was a daywalker, anyway?)… much less some kind of timeline where someone who couldn’t have been born more than a year or two ago was old enough to…

/Stop thinking, Buffy. Look at the pretty things./ 

She was in a wide, green room filled with shining, if cracked glass and honey-colored, wood accents. The dusty carpets were green and expensively patterned to look like some sort of eye-dazzling mirage. The dim orange light from outside shining dully across every polished surface of the vast space, making her wonder how amazing it must have looked when it wasn’t… you know. Trapped in a hell dimension. “Wow.”

Spike grinned and snaked his tongue behind his teeth all suggestively. Clearly he was proud of his newest accommodations. “Wait till you see the Crystal Ballroom.”

“The…”

“It’s where we hold court. I think it’s gonna be right up your alley, Slayer. Like somethin’ right out of one of your girly little fantasies…”

She lifted a brow at him, pinned him with a half-glare, half-demand. “What makes you think I have any girly fantasies left?”

He was practically bouncing on his toes. “Guess we’ll find out, yeah? C’mon, pet.” And he tugged her, practically bubbling with anticipation, across the room toward the exit.

She let herself be towed, wondering just what the hell had gotten into him. He really was being an incredible showoff right now. What was this?

They passed through long stretches of beautiful hotel-ness—the place really was like a palace—through stretches of tall, white columns and white walls, and past sections of wall with interesting wallpaper that had some tall, frondy-looking tropical plant design on it. They went down a very long section of echoingly empty hall, turned through two wide double doors made of some really beautiful wood with gorgeous beveled glass and crystal inlays—god, she’d have killed for something like that in any _part_ of her house in Sunnydale, even if it would have lasted exactly five seconds—and stepped into a wonderland.

There were tall, mirrored windows in threes in the walls, everywhere; beautiful ivory walls, and each mirrored window had beveled crystal arches over the tops of them, sectioned off in gorgeous, French-cut amazingness. The ceiling had this huge light fixture in it that, if there was any electricity, probably would have set the room ablaze, the amount of glass and crystal that was everywhere, but since there wasn’t electricity in hell, it just hung up there looking profound and looming in its weird, multifariousness; like some kind of bulging, beautiful insect’s eye staring benevolently down on proceedings and catching faint glints of ochre light from whatever sources poked their way in from the outside. 

Whatever tables had used to be in here had all been moved to line the walls or had been moved out, but there were dozens of chairs set up all along one side of the room; beautiful spindly things with a sort of ivory-brass finish that almost looked pearlescent. The room still smelled like the ghosts of former roses that had used to decorate the space. White ones, she didn’t doubt.

But one whole side of the room, in front of three of the mirror-windows, was taken up by a sort of platform made out of who knew what, but covered in what she assumed were old tablecloths, based on their pearly-bronze color. On that platform were two chairs; big, heavy things with silken cushions that had clearly been dragged in from another room. One was sort of bronze-colored and covered in a kind of royal blue velvet, and sat to the far right of the stage thing if you were facing it. The other was honey-gold wood with blood blood-red cushions. 

No one would mistake them for anything but thrones. 

She was still taking it all in, feeling distinctly nonplussed, when Spike abruptly let go of her arm and bent to kiss her hurriedly on her neck, right on her bite scar—which, shiver, much?—pulled in a long, deep inhalation of her scent, and murmured in her ear, “Showtime, luv. Find a good vantage. ‘S gonna be something to see.” A seeming hesitance entered his voice then, and his tone went strangely… Well, for Spike, almost tentative. “And… remember that I’m on stage, yeah?” With a peck on her cheek he was gone, striding purposefully—one might say swaggering—up to the blood-red chair. Whereat he took a seat—if that was what you could call it when the person in question literally flung themselves onto a piece of furniture and then slung their legs over one arm and propped themselves up on the other like a decadent piece of lazy man-candy, and of _course_ the red one was his. And of _course_ he would sit like that on it. If you could even use a word like ‘sit’ for what he was doing. Lounging, maybe. 

He was basically on display. 

Nnngh.

/Okay, you lasted two years with and without him around. You can handle a few more minutes, jeez./ Firmly instructing her long-restrained libido to take it down a notch, Buffy moved to locate a seat across from her theatrical vampire. 

She was just installing herself in one of the few chairs still extant in the room when his eyes caught hers, flashing her a quick blue warning. And then Illyria was sweeping into the room, a retinue of six or seven multicolored demon-y-looking girls trailing behind her like eager sycophants in a Cordelia Chase reunion. Though, none of Cordelia’s hangers-on had never looked so utterly dwarfed by her aura as these demons were by Illyria’s sheer, crackling _presence_. It had for sure impressed Buffy when she had first met the Old One, but she had never really stopped to think what kind of impression a demonic demigod would make on little sub-demons like these. 

Apparently it was a big one. 

Illyria didn’t see her as she swept up to her azure throne. In fact she looked to neither the right nor the left, nor at anything but Spike as she moved toward the raised area of the room (Buffy had a vague memory from some high school class or something that it was called something like a dais) and took her seat. 

Then about half the demon-girls broke off from Illyria to trot away toward Spike. Moved over behind his throne. Started to lean over the arms and the back. Laid their_ hands _on him_._ _Caressed _his_ biceps. _Got their_ fingers _in his_ hair. _Slid them over his_ chest._

/Oh _hell_ no./

Buffy started to rise, murder on her mind… and was arrested by a sharp sapphire glance that indicated she should wait, that there was more to this than met the eye. 

/What the actual fuck?/

Illyria’s head turned very slowly to regard her apparent co-ruler. Her very weird eyes seemed to spark with possessive intent as she watched the sexy vampire lounging next to her throne with his… his _harem_ touching him all over, and why was he making her watch this? /After you got all pissed about me taking care of Angel for all this time, you have the… the _stones_ to…/ 

“You appear pleased about something on this day, my pet.”

/Oh, I _bet_ he is!/   
  
“The anxiety which has distracted you for these weeks is now gone.”

Buffy bristled even harder at the affectionately possessive mien the demon queen still had around her man. This was all just not even happening. What was Spike trying to show her? That he was a free vamp? Was he trying to punish her for being gone for so long? Was he…

Spike’s eyes did not move toward her, but she felt something that she might almost qualify as a warning through the perking in her blood that was her sense of him. “Yeah,” he answered in his most smug and self-congratulatory tones. “I’m feeling less off my game, it’s true.” He tilted his head across the room, eyes leading the way to where Buffy fumed just to one side of the bank of audience chairs. “Buffy’s back. Been taking care of Angel back at Wolfram and Hart this whole time. I told you how he was laid up with a broken back?”

Confusion reigned as Illyria followed Spike’s gaze. Arrowed in on Buffy with almost invasive attention. “I considered this one to be a distraction for you before. I will reassess now, as it seems your focus is in fact better when she is present.”

/Um, okay? Maybe if you weren’t letting yourself get petted all the time by a bunch of skanky demon-girl hos, you wouldn’t be _distracted_…/ Though it was nice to hear that Illyria thought her presence would ensure that Spike would be more on his game. /I’ll show you less distracted if I have to kill every chick in this whole fucking hotel, and then you, you dick./

Also, what was up with Illyria reading her guy this well?

Out of her periphery, Buffy noticed that the demon chicks hovering around Spike had stopped sliding their boobs all over him to stare at Buffy as if they had just seen a walking, talking, five-foot rat come marching into their palace and take a dump on the floor. Which, wow. 

“And I find myself,” Illyria went on. Paused, tilted her head oddly, as if made curious by a sensation. “…Pleased,” she finally selected, “to hear that Angel is recovering, though it is strange to know that he is no longer the home of a proper demon.”

Buffy swore she could _feel_ Spike relax a little, and wondered at the obviously weird politics of his relationship with this Illyria chick. “Yeah, Peaches and his very proper demon are always some topic of conversation or another,” Spike answered in a totally ironic tone.

Buffy found herself, once more, in the position of trying very hard not murder a guy with whom she was, paradoxically, very deeply in love. /Why is this my life? Always?/ 

What the hell was going _on_ here? Spike wouldn’t do this to her. Wouldn’t cheat on her, for one, and wouldn’t bring her in here and rub it in her face if he _was_, so what the hell…

_‘Remember that I’m on stage, yeah?’_

Fuck, this had _better_ be some kind of… act, or…

“It is a topic, however, which must wait for another time,” Illyria cautioned, having completely missed the irony. “Our servants approach with today’s catch of human detritus.”

“They’re called refugees, Illyria.”

“As you say.”

Any other time Buffy would have choked back a snort of laughter at what had apparently been a longstanding exchange. Right now she was too confused and pissed off to feel a whole lot of mirth.

Off to the right, the big double doors opened again, and a couple more skanky demon girls entered, this time leading a really ragtag bunch of the sorriest looking broken, terrified human beings Buffy had ever encountered in her entire life.

There were about a dozen of them, give or take. All kinds of people; men and women, boys and girls and a couple whose genders she couldn’t quite pin down right now; all colors and all ages, though she thought they really clustered in the middle, age-wise, and she really didn’t want to think about why there were so few older ones… and so few kids. Because she truly, definitely did not want to think about how hard it would be for someone at either end of the age spectrum to stay alive in a place like this. 

All of them had some kind of wound, some of them in truly terrible states, though it also looked like they had had at least the benefit of some basic First Aid. At least she thought she saw a few bandages here and there, evidence of blood clean-up, a crutch or two, some splints. Being here without Slayer healing was of the suck, clearly. All of them were wearing basically rags at this point; not that she herself was doing much better, to be fair. Literally every single one of them looked like they were in some stage of starvation, or dehydration, or both, though if they’d had First Aid no doubt they’d also been given some water and a snack or two at least. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t be walking in here, some of them. They stank; like BO and pee and a lot of other unmentionable things, and they were, every one of them, sunburnt and chapped and chafed and footsore and looked positively petrified.

The worst were the children. They just looked shell-shocked. Like they had seen so much at this point that the trauma had settled into their bones, and they were never going to close their too-wide eyes again. 

Like it would be a kindness to just make it all go away. 

Oh god.

“You have come before the Demon Lords of Beverly Hills, seeking asylum,” Illyria intoned as the gaggle of terrified refugees straggled to a halt in front of the two thrones.

The sound of scared and labored breathing was heavy in the silence. Eventually it was broken by one very small voice; a little Latina girl with long, wavy hair, snarled dirty and with the remains of some wilted flower—Buffy thought it was a dandelion—still tangled up over one ear. “Are you gonna eat us, Señora?”

All remaining ire fled from her mind, and Buffy felt her throat bind up with tears she could not shed. /Oh, poor baby…/

Spike sat up at that and abruptly launched himself from his throne, utterly ignoring everything about his previous languorous, playboy-y image to kneel in front of the tiny girl (she couldn’t have been more than five or six). Smiled down at her. Tilted his head a little. “Here’s the thing, little bit. I may be a monster. Big Blue up there, too. But we’re not the bad kind, alright? So we’re not gonna eat you.” He stood then, and waved an arm to encompass the rest of the straggling group… though his eyes lingered longest on the man to whom the little girl clung with such clear desperation. “What we are going to do is send you on with a friend of ours, name of Conner. He’ll escort you to a safehouse we know about, where a few friends of ours will see to you. Make you as comfortable as can be done in this special corner of hell. Get you cleaned up. Maybe find you some new clothes, if they can. Help you if you’re looking for anyone you’ve lost. And meantime, know we’re workin’ to put all this to rights, yeah?”

A too-thin blonde woman with a maybe second-degree freaking sunburn stepped forward, and it was clear from her expression that she was shocked at her own temerity, but it was just as clear that Spike’s expansive speech had given her the courage to speak up. “Why… are you helping us? If you’re a demon? Or are you… human, and just…” Her eyes shot from his face to Illyria’s clearly inhuman visage, shuddered away.

Spike smiled at her too, and pushed himself to his feet. “Ducks, I’m as much a demon as that one, but I made a promise to a girl. Learned a few things since then about the kind of monster I can be, versus the kind of monster I have been, before. And the thing is, while it might be fun to run around out there tearin’ up the countryside…” His eyes sought over the tops of a dozen heads, caught Buffy’s gaze. Twinkled a little before they sobered. “I’ve been there. Done it all; for a hundred-plus years. Got boring. Thought I’d give bein’ a white hat a try for a bit.”

“You’re no monster,” a pre-teen boy piped up, sounding if anything, let down. “I seen some monsters out there. You’re just a guy. How’re you supposed to protect us if you’re just some skinny white guy?”

Spike sighed and turned a little toward Illyria. “It always happens, yeah?”

“They always seem to require a demonstration,” she agreed from her mostly-silent vantage. 

Spike turned back to the crowd and tilted his head at the crowd. “Brace yourselves, then,” he informed them a little sadly. “And remember. The tyke asked for this.” And, with no further ado, he vamped.

Predictably, the crowd went from a slightly-controlled group of anxious refugees to a squealing, panicked mob of terrified cattle who had seen just one demon too many in the past few days.

Spike slumped for a second; just a little. Straightened wearily. And everything about the act he’d been playing up to that moment vanished. “Ladies, can you see to it that the refugees are taken care of with our usual brand of hospitality?”

“All bloody hail!” the girls chorused, and every single one of them scampered out after the fleeing humans. Even the three who’d been hanging all over his throne. 

/It was all for show./ It was such a relief that Buffy almost fell to her knees. /Just an act…/

As Spike waved his demonic harem off to chase the broken evacuees down the halls and round them up, Buffy felt herself moving toward him of her own accord. There was a hint of uncertainty between them on the blood-bond, and… /All bloody hail? _Really_, Spike?/ 

He was nodding at Illyria when she rose all majestically from her own throne to depart the room. 

“The humans have been dispatched. I will return to my chambers and continue my attempts to coax life from the plant-life which dwells therein.”

“Yeah. You do that.”

Taking a deep breath in the hopes it would keep her voice steady, Buffy waited till they were alone before she approached her love across the now-empty ‘throne room’. “She’s going to talk to a plant?”

A pained sort of look crossed Spike’s face as he watched his co-ruler depart. “It’s a hobby of hers.”

She was really going to let that go. Honestly she could care less about what an ancient demon demigod did for a hobby anyway. “Big production,” she managed in the lightest tone she could possibly rustle up.

“Yeah, well…” He scrubbed one hand behind his neck, looking deeply embarrassed. “I would’ve given the girls orders to act a little more… uh, circumspect, but there wasn’t time. Didn’t know you were gonna be here, yeah?” He winced then, as if he’d just then realized how that sounded. “Not that I go around takin’ ‘em up on any of it, but it looks good on paper. Demon lord, livin’ it up…”

Buffy bit her lip and decided to just let that one fly right on by. “So,” she asked softly, pointing with her chin in the direction of the vanished herd of humanity, “it always happens that way?”

He sighed and looked down. “Buffy…”

/Oh, the hell with it./ She didn’t know half of what he’d been through here, or what he’d had to do to survive it. She needed to cut him some slack. 

Reaching out, she laid a hand on her beautiful vampire’s upper arm. And something broke in him. Turning, he flung an arm over her shoulder, buried his face in the top of her head; half as if he were seeking comfort from her presence and half as if he simply wanted to prove to himself that she was actually there. “Always got to show them the demon,” he muttered, and his head tilted till his cheekbone settled on her crown. She felt the shiver run through him.

Turning her head a little, she followed his regretful gaze down the hall, frowning a little. It was too bad, because otherwise things had gone really well. The way he had handled that whole thing had been pretty awesome, actually; and to be real, he had been the main point-person for the handling. Illyria hadn’t done much at all except sit there and supervise; which was probably by design. She wasn’t exactly a people-person, that one.

Pulling back a little, Buffy turned her gaze back on her love, eyed him for a moment in an objective assessment. He looked too pale. Too thin, like he was losing muscle. He was a little red around the eyes… and he looked tired. Like being king up here was aging him. 

It was clearly weighing on him, this whole thing, and also, what had he been eating? Because it clearly hadn’t been enough. /Which makes sense, since, you know, no hospitals anymore, no butcher shops even./ And obviously it would terrify people like those if he asked if he could… well, take it out in trade by asking for a light snack from one or two of them in passing before they headed off to wherever this safehouse was. 

Besides; to be real, most of them were probably too depleted to have given him much to go on anyway. 

God, had he had any blood, aside from the one quick dip into her, since they’d _gotten_ here?

She needed to feed him, stat; and then she needed to figure out how she could help him. Help support him without taking anything away from him, because what he had accomplished here was amazing, and… And if it were her, she wouldn’t want someone to come along and undermine her or try to take over, take credit for her accomplishments. He deserved to own what he’d earned, here. It really was incredible, and he’d done it all on his own; without her, and with a partner who was maybe possibly not the most dependable, and certainly not the most sociable when it came to politics, and…

And then she recalled how excited Spike had been to show her his ‘court’. How bouncy he had been about it when he had been bringing her here, and it hit her belatedly. He was super proud of his current situation. Of what he had achieved. He knew she was used to seeing him beaten down and kicked, starved and alone; the oddball of the vampire world. But she knew, somewhere in the back of her head, that at one point he had been a hotshot master vampire; had had a retinue and minions, freedom to roam, and all that. That being so isolated had been tough on him. 

Now he had something, finally, to show for his efforts. A real achievement. And, honestly, he _deserved_ to be proud of what he had built here.

She hated to admit it, but the fact that he had only managed to do so without her present might actually have said a lot about her influence in his life lately. Which, ouch. Kind of smarted. /How bad have you been for him these past few years? Holding him back, making him be just love’s bitch and not the vamp he could have been?/

“I’m really proud of you,” she told him softly, and kept her eyes on him as she said it.

His head jerked around to stare at her, apparently deeply surprised by the unexpected kudos. “You…”

“Are really proud. Of you. Of all that you’ve accomplished here. It must’ve been pretty tough. Still must be; pretending to be some cruel, evil, skanky Demon Lord to hold your own with whatever other ones are springing up all over the city—Angel said he heard from the ghost that there are like a dozen by now—and still manage to keep this refugee thing happening behind the front. And you’re doing it; keeping up this amazing juggling act, and I don’t know how you’re doing it, but I want you to know that I…”

His mouth was on hers before she could finish; a kiss full of so many different emotions she at first couldn’t quite sort them all out. Desperation, she thought, was there; she diagnosed that one right away, since she shared it. A cell-deep yearning toward completion that she recognized now, in context, from her years in blood-thrall to another vampire, combined with the pounding physical connection that she had with this one; mutual and thundering through the blood link between them. And wonder. A shocked wonder and pride that she would _see_ him. See him and recognize all that he had done. That she had found him worthy.

And, underneath it all, she could feel his weakness; his painful, famished hunger, his trembling need. A purely physical thing… and knew for a fact then that he had been starving himself. 

She pulled away then, something turning inside a worry that might very shortly spin itself up into rage. “Spike,” she asked very quietly, “what have you been eating?”

He jerked up and went ramrod straight. Leaned away and tried to affect a casual slouch; but with a stiltedness that was painfully obvious to her. It was, after all, a familiar move from long ago; as if she had slapped him, or slugged him in the nose, said something incredibly hurtful. And everything in him armored up, closed down. “I’m _fine_, Buffy.”

/Oh, no you don’t./ “No,” she came back firmly, “you’re not. You look almost as bad as you did when you were living with Giles.” And how insane was it that a _vampire_ was having a tough time staying fed in a _demon_ dimension? But those were the breaks when said vampire had a conscience, she supposed, feeling grim and belatedly self-recriminating that she hadn’t thought of it before. Because as hard as it had been for her to scavenge some kind of sustenance in this idiotic place, clearly for him it had been even more difficult.

He looked like hammered shit right now. “Tell me. What have you had since me? Since we got separated? Rats or something? Because I know the hospital down the road is probably not a going concern anymore, based off of how those people all looked, and I know from how you were with those refugees that you’re not trying to convince them to let you have a sip here and there…” 

He winced and tried even harder to pull away. “Wouldn’t do that. Know you wouldn’t…”

“What?” She hardened her voice and ruthlessly stifled her old sensibilities, feeling belligerent. /This is hell, dammit. Literally hell./ “Want you to _survive?_ I’ve experienced it now, and I know you can take enough to live off of without killing someone. Do you think I want you to starve to death because of some high and mighty idea that if you bite someone who’s offering it because you saved them, that means you’ve gone back over to the dark side or something?”  
  
He blinked at her like an owl, clearly stunned. “Well, Buffy, with the way you were about the suckhouses and that, I thought…”

/Oh for God’s sake./ Did he really think she was such a judgmental bitch about what he needed to _live?_

And yet… she _had_ been in the past. A totally inflexible, intolerant and immovable jerk about the subject even when he had been an ally; to the point that it stung to think of it now, the way she had so consistently invalidated his very right to exist. 

Knowing that, she made her answer low and quiet in the hopes that at least the time since they had started over might have penetrated his thick skull to override… /What? Years of abuse?/ “And I thought,” she reminded him softly, “I told you I’ve reassessed, and I don’t care about that anymore. That I’d rather you be alive and not starving yourself.”

He turned away a little, so clearly a shell of himself that it hurt to look at him. “I have had… one or two…” He trailed off, the picture of misery. It was uttered like a confession.

/Okay?/ She couldn’t but be glad for that, reached out to touch his shoulder, wondering why, now that she had given him retroactive carte blanche to do what he needed to do to survive, he should look so pained and so guilty. Unless he had lost control and drained them out of hunger, but she kind of doubted that, after the way he’d been so devastated about what had happened in that cellar when he’d been under the control of The First. 

Also, why, if he had eaten, did he look so damn _hollow?_ “Spike, what…”

“Sometimes the people they bring in aren’t gonna make it, yeah?” he told her thickly, and he was still looking away from her; toward the far wall and some distant image only he could see. “The first one was a bloke who’d had his guts half-torn out. That’s a rubbish way to die, Buffy.” He seemed to hunch in on himself further. “Now’s a lot like back in my day. No medical care to speak of when it comes to septic shock and that. Would take days to kick off and be the hell of a way to go with somethin’ like that, and he knew it. And I knew if I didn’t get to him fast his blood’d be spoilt, so I asked him…” He faltered. Hitched. Picked up again. “Did he want me to end it fast for him.” 

“Oh,” Buffy answered, very softly. /Oh, Spike./

“Yeah.” He still couldn’t look at her. “I did him quick. Tried not to hurt him. Wasn’t much blood left in him anyway, but I got to him before it was poisoned. Did my best to make it fast so he’d just feel like he was goin’ to sleep. Poor bugger probably felt comfortable for the first time since he got gored by that Verulga demon, but still felt like a right arse for kicking someone when they were down…”

“Spike.”

He kept going, like floodgates had been opened in him; making his confession to her who was his sole source of conscience. “That was… right after we took over. The other one was beginning of this week. They brought her in with her legs busted up right proper; in loads of places. Torn through the flesh; the kind of break where you know you’d need orthopedics and all that rot to get the person back together again. Like that git Angel, yeah?” he asked her, still without looking at her.

“Yeah,” she whispered. She understood. All too well.

“No spells here or any of that rubbish, and she was in agony. Soon there’d be gangrene. She was going to die and she knew it. And I had that same window. Not much left in her either, but…” Another hitched breath, necessary only for speech… and pain. “A lot of ‘em… They’ve been too far gone for me to… help. The blood’s been poisoned, yeah? Couldn’t ease ‘em off this merry mortal coil…” From the choked sound of his voice it was uncertain whether he felt greater guilt for the ones he had euthanized... or for the ones he had not been able to put out of their misery. “She asked me to do it. So I… did her quick, right and proper, just like the bloke. Swear she looked peaceful, right after I done it.” His eyes jerked over his shoulder briefly to meet hers, and they were blue wells of misery. “But I was still killing, Buffy, and I…”

God. He was _shaking_. Desperately needed an absolution that she prayed she could give him. “You were saving them a horrible fate.”

His eyes shuttered once more. She could see it even from here; the terrible movie of what he had had to do to survive still playing on a constant loop behind his eyelids. “I haven’t stopped a single heart since before the chip. Not ‘cept the ones where The First was at the wheel, and that…”

She caught him hard by the shoulder, yanked him around and into her arms. And felt him shudder as he sank, piecemeal, into her embrace. “It’s not the same, Spike. It’s not the same at all. And I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere again…” /Why did I stay away so long? I’m such an idiot…/

He trembled against her body, half coming undone. “Buffy, you’re not…”

/Food. I know. It’s different./ “I get that. It’s… a side-benefit. But…” /I’m not about to let you starve, dammit./

The tremors in him increased; as if he were having a war in himself. The shaking spread to his voice. She had never heard him like this. “Don’t need much anymore. Old enough not to need to feed all the time like a damn fledge, but couldn’t live off of you, luv, no matter how powerful your blood is. You kept me goin’ for days, sure… but that was on top of what I’d had before the battle. You’d be weak as a kitten ‘f you were tryin’ to manage me all on your own. I’d still need to find… another source…”

It hurt, but facts were facts; especially considering that neither of them were exactly their old selves here. Who knew if Buffy’s blood would even have the same overall effect as in their home dimension? /I don’t heal as fast. I don’t react quite the same way. Maybe…/ 

God knew she couldn’t stand to be debilitated in a dimension like this. Especially since they had no idea how long-term their stay was going to be. For all they knew, this was home now, no matter how godawful that thought might be. 

She swallowed against the lump in her throat, tried not to think of Dawn, left all alone in Scotland and trying to manage as a steadily-expanding giant. To focus on the here and now and the current problem. “Then we’ll figure it out,” she whispered fervently. “Find a way to supplement you; keep you fed somehow, between me and any volunteers we can find for you...”

“Buffy…”

She hated that it had torn him up so much, what he had had to do, but in a way he had been performing a real social service with the euthanizing thing. In a place like this it was a necessary one. Maybe… Maybe there was something she could say that would possibly, someday, make it alright for him. But maybe not. Not with William up front, now. He was a really sensitive guy, that William. 

His demon-side was no doubt fine with it. It was William who was the hang-up. This dimension was no damn place for what she was beginning to suspect was, hiding deep inside her vampire, a far more genteel—and apparently poetic—Victorian than they had once believed, no matter what he had been forced to witness in the interim.

Well; they’d work around it. 

In the meantime, both William and Spike needed some comfort… and the reminder that she was there and she loved both sides of her guy, unconditionally. Whatever awkwardness might have lain between them before Court had vanished with the realization of the emotional weight he had been carrying this entire time. She had a job to do right now and she would do it. It was, in fact, something that was long overdue between them.

It was high time she made love to this beautiful vampire who loved her so desperately. She had never done it—not really—but there was a first time for everything… and a lot of lost time to make up for between the 'three' of them. “Hey.” 

He lifted red-rimmed, agonized eyes to meet hers, jerked a little when she caught his hand. “Where’s a Demon Lord keep his bedroom in a place like this?”

When he just sort of regarded her like she was crazy she smiled and, turning, began to tow him out of the crystalline throne room. “It’s okay. I’ll find it. I’m sure it’s the biggest suite, knowing you. You have an eye for a fancy nest.” 

That seemed to shake him awake. “You don’t have to be such a cocky bird,” he protested as she dragged him through the big double doors and, when she flipped a mental coin and took a decisive turn to the right, he sighed and tugged her to the left instead. “This way. It’s the Presidential Suite.”

She threw him a pointed, if gentle, smile over her shoulder and continued her forward progression in the direction indicated. “What’d I say.”  
  
  
TBC...  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
So...  
  
Next week, commencing a whole slew of smutty making up for lost time (in more ways than one).   
Basically, that's gonna be the name of the game for a few upcoming posts. Because once these two get started...   
  
Yanno.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so...  
Commencing the sequential incredibly long chapters of basically mostly porn, interspersed here and there (next week) with slightly smutty conversation and "catching up". Because there's a lot of catching up to be had. In oh so many ways. 
> 
> Disclaimer: This is a super-duper long chapter. But, you know, no one seems to mind when your super-duper long chapters are smut, so we'll see if anyone cares, lol

The suite in question turned out to be up on the top floor, and required a trip up four flights of stairs and down a bunch of halls all decorated pink with those big, green, frondy plants wallpapered beneath it. (“It’s called the Pink Palace for a reason, yeah?”) But it was worth it. When they reached his door—a couple of his demon-minion-girls (and why all girls, by the way? A question to ask later)—opened it up for them with a few askance looks in her direction and they stepped in… to what was clearly paradise.

The room was by far the most palatial thing Buffy had ever seen. Talk about living it up in style. There was a completely unnecessary white marble fireplace, a big balcony stretching across what looked like the entire length of the suite overlooking the back of the hotel grounds—must have been a heck of a view when there was actual greenery and things to see—and really plush, gorgeous furniture everywhere. Plump, ecru chairs, sexy glass-and-brass tables, thick black Oriental rug with a spectacular orchid pattern on it…

For all that, the main room looked hardly lived in. It was just a hotel room, if a really fantastic one, and devoid of that sense of… ‘Spikeness’. Just like that godawful apartment. Like, there were a few articles of clothing strewn around, over the backs of chairs and things like that, shirts that smelled like him and stuff like that, but nothing that screamed, “Spike lives here!”. 

Slightly concerned about possible shades of that hideous tank of an apartment, Buffy made a face and turned, seeking the bedroom, her hand still locked in his. Caught a glimpse of a bed through one doorway, and tugged him purposefully in that direction. He followed willingly enough, though with an odd halt in his step as if he was unsure how she might react to what she saw. But what she saw… 

Okay, _this_ room was his. Everywhere in it there were touches of Spike. From a vast, wine-red, embroidered duvet he had scrounged from god knew where to hang from the ceiling like a canopy and cover the ivory back of the bed—she could see it peeping out, just barely, like a hint of a past life—to the bronze candelabra he had somehow gathered up and scattered around the room to fill to give the place light whenever the orange glow of the insanely long days faded, to the chandelier in same, dripping red wax to the thick, curlicued Oriental carpet on the floor. She thought she vaguely remembered this building from her younger years, passing by on Sunset on the way to Rodeo Drive with her mom for shopping trips—mostly window-shopping trips, but shopping trips nonetheless—and based on the shape of the little arched windows high up in the wall she thought this room must be up in the part of the building that was styled to look like an old mission. The window-slits let in some modicum of the orange light from outside, which highlighted the crimson and scarlet of her lover’s little additions—especially the ones draped around the boudoir—and made the room even more of a classic vampire's haven.

It even smelled like him in here. Smelled lived-in by _him,_ in a way that apartment had not. Just standing here she caught the faint hint whiskey—there. He’d found a new flask. It peeped out behind the candelabra on the nightstand—and of Morleys—there. Also on the nightstand, behind the flask, the battered old Zippo currently snugged inside the plastic wrapper till he deigned to go out again—and the slightest hint of stale smoke, though it didn’t seem like he smoked inside a lot. He’d never liked that smell in his stuff, generally tended to smoke upstairs where everything was stone or outside even when he’d lived in his crypt, and only ever lit up after sex if he had completely forgot himself. Or if they’d done something so…

Well. Anyway; here he probably smoked out on that balcony thing. 

She caught the hints of other scents, underneath the tobacco, the faint touch of whiskey. Expensive sheets; there, where the comforter was turned down. Thick, cream-colored, and from here, probably about a zillion-thread-count. Those were going to feel hella nice on the skin after months of over-washed, thin ones done in cold water up in Scotland, and before that, the used-and-abused linens of Revello. 

Old paper, too. The faintest scent of books that had always bewildered her, whenever she had been down in his bedroom in the crypt. She had never been able to pinpoint the source, then. But in here… There, against one wall, on a small shelf, there were a little slew of them, scrounged from somewhere. They looked like classics, because of course they were. They weren’t even carefully-hidden, like they had been when she had been coming to call all the time at his last place.

And under it all; the scent of him. His skin, which even without the faint touch of whatever that slightly-spicy-smelling thing he liked to wear, was as familiar to her as her own flesh. It made her move closer to him, bump his shoulder with her own in approval. “Wow,” she murmured, feeling nothing less than relieved by this glimpse into his private world. “Only you, Spike. Only you could make a bright hotel room look like your underground crypt in Sunnydale.” Though why he had done it in a place where the sun couldn’t hurt him…

/Maybe being in the light all the time bugs him. Maybe it’s overwhelming, and he wants some dark colors just to, like, rest his eyes. Or maybe…/

Maybe he was just being sentimental? Though why he’d be sentimental for _that_ time was a puzzler. 

Spike just shrugged a little, as if uncertain what she’d think. She had to shake her head at that, because at this point, was he still so unsure of himself around her that she had to remind him that she had thought of his place, before, as “comfy”? /Well, seedy on top and comfy underneath, but we all have our reps to keep up./ Spike probably more than most, considering all he had lost in his time in that town they had shared that was now, gratefully, mostly a crater. And, the aboveground part of the crypt had been sort of the recipient of a lot of random collateral damage over the years—quite a bit of it, honestly, from her hands as much as from anyone else—so keeping it seedy had probably kept expenses down. Whereas the underground part… That had been where his real investment had lain.

Anyway, this room was ‘him’, and that was enough for her. “I’m glad,” she told him softly. “That stupid apartment you had when you were working with Angel had about zero personality.”

“Yeah, well…” He sort of grunted as he picked up one currently unlit candelabra and examined it with undue interest. “Figured we might be here awhile. Wanted to make it a home. Settle in a bit.” He shrugged and set the thing down, still determinedly not looking her way at all. “And, you know, _vampire.”_ He not-quite leered at her, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it.

“I like it,” she informed him quietly, and pulled his head down to kiss him, very gently, on the lips.

When he pulled away, it was to eye her in clear surprise. She wasn’t sure if it was for the gentleness or for the sentiment. “Yeah?” he asked, and one eyebrow was up. 

“Yeah.” She tugged his head down again. Held his mouth a hairsbreadth from her own. “Spike, if I were to make love to you on your big, presidential bed over there, would it ruin your reputation as the local demon lord?”

She felt the tremble, then. Full-bodied against her. “You… Buffy…”

“Want to make love to you.” She smiled into his eyes, aware she was blazing at him with certainty. “That okay with you?”

She could swear that, despite his overall chill, he warmed somehow against her. “Christ, yeah.”

/We started out against a wall the first time, and I used you. This time… We’ve already fixed that. Then—before—we went to bed—the only time we went to bed—and it was because I wasn’t really there. But I’m going to _be_ here this time, Spike. And we’ll… We’ll start over./

Per their previous pattern, she would have kicked things off by shoving him unceremoniously onto said bed, even if it meant he’d end up there by dint of flying halfway across the room and probably cracking the headboard, if not the frame of the thing. This time, though, she pulled him around to lead him there, shoving the dark button-down off of his shoulders as they went. “Where’d you get the clothes?” The ones he’d been wearing when they’d parted had been in tatters, much like her own. These were relatively new.

He was looking at her with awe, eyes glowing. “The girls. Go out to fetch what we need. Not that the Smurf ever wears…” He cut off abruptly when she tugged his crimson tee up over his torso; lifted his arms obediently, eyes steady and surprised on hers as she stripped the garment over his head. And shivered when she slid her fingers with slow, deliberate, gentle care down along his too-thin abdomen—he had new scars, dammit—and, in passing, grazed her fingertips lightly over his nipples. God, she had always loved his body. Once upon a time she had thought she preferred bulkier men, but in the end they had just made her feel more… hulked-over than supported or complemented in any way. Their strength had never matched her own no matter what their size, so what was the point in all that extraneous muscle and height?

In comparison Spike’s lithe, feline grace and his insane speed—not to mention his insouciant, chaotic fighting style—had always more than made up for any differential in their comparative strengths. And she could look him in the eye, which she really enjoyed.

And… he just truly looked unbelievably good with his shirt off. 

But he desperately needed feeding up. He was looking almost as thin now as he had after he’d escaped the Initiative, and she could swear that before they’d come here he had felt way more muscular under her hands. She knew for a fact that his arms had had more going on, then, when he’d been eating more regularly… and watching him fight, like that… It had recalled to her their early days, squaring off against each other, when the thrill of fighting him had been spectacular; arousing, because his strength had been damn near equal to her own.

Not now, though, in his weakened state. She couldn’t let this go on. Not here in this dangerous place. She had let it continue for far too long in Sunnydale. It was a mistake she would rectify, now she knew the source of her sins.

It was alright, though. They could start with that today, and figure out the rest from there. 

One thing she needed to ask first; in light of what he had told her, and in view of the past. “Do you want this? Right now?”

His whole body seemed to tremble in front of her eyes; so hard that she could swear she felt the ripple of it through the blood-bond, a rolling tide in her own veins. “Buffy,” he told her with firm patience, and his eyes, fixed on hers like sapphires in an amber light, had taken on a mildly sardonic air, “If you hadn’t caught it before, I’d think my answer was loud and clear.”

She supposed she would be mildly perturbed right now if their roles were reversed and _he_ had asked her more than once. /End of consent discussion./ 

Except… he should know why. Settling her hands on the waistband of his black jeans, she toyed with the button a little. “The reason I’m asking is, I don’t want you to do anything. Just this time, okay? I want you to just let me… take care of you. And I don’t know if that’s…”

His shoulder muscles strained visibly and his neck corded with abrupt tension. “Bloody hell, Slayer; if you don’t get these trousers off of me soon, I’m gonna make a mess of myself just hearin’ you say it.”

Well. That was explicit enough. And heartening, to know that… she was different. Different to him, now, than before; and different to him than… The other girl had been. “Okay. Don’t move.”

“You’re a hard taskmistress, but I’m all yours, pet.” His voice was hoarse and strained and wow. She had never heard him like this. 

Time to hurry up and get him on the bed.

Suiting action to words, she undid the jeans… and wow. His cock, as it sprang free, was seriously in need of attention. His foreskin had drawn back already and the tender glans, normally never exposed to the roughness of jeans or other stimulation, was already glistening and slick. “Hm. Missed me?”

“Buffy, are you trying to dust me where I stand?”

With a perky grin, she nudged the jeans down and gave him a tiny shove backward. He toppled to the bed without complaint and walked backwards on his hands as she prowled over him, eyeing him with possessive enjoyment as she surveyed his sexy body. 

He was still wearing too many clothes. They encumbered his movement. 

Once upon a time she would have been peremptory. Said something short and command-y, like, ‘Lose the boots’. Now she just moved to yank them off and out of the way, and was grateful he’d been wearing them lazily unlaced so she could make quick work of them; so she could pull his jeans the rest of the way off with eyes still locked on his, while he watched her with a kind of awed hunger that made her feel like she’d had a screw loose all that last couple of years not to have given him this and more before now. 

Then she perched on her knees between his legs to survey his naked form—he shivered under her gaze, wonder still the main expression on his face—and just smiled for a moment before pulling off her slightly overlarge, borrowed blouse one smooth motion. And watched his body react, as it had always done, to her. The way his every muscle stood out as if carven from alabaster, the way his eyes went up in blue flames at the sight of her. 

She swore she could _smell_ the arousal beating off of him, and since when could she…

Well. Blood-bond, much? 

It would add an interesting new dimension to things. 

Tilting her head a little, she held the shirt off to one side and shrugged a little. “You think your people can find me something else to wear? Because I think we need to burn this. They were really short on stylish changes of clothes at Wolfram and Hart.” She glanced over at the white object dangling from her fingers, striped by dragon exhaust, and shrugged dispassionately. “A lot of suits. Not a lot of ‘em in my size.” She kept the smirk on as she dropped the damaged material to the floor and lifted up, began the process of stripping her lower half. Spike’s glittering gaze followed her every move like a man who had been lost in a desert or something, and she was a sparkling mirage of a gorgeous fountain. “Really sucks to clean up and then put the same things back on…” She got a leg out horizontal to her body in an old ballet maneuver from her elementary school days—ballet had been excellent training for cheerleading… and had been even better as a precursor for slaying. Muscle control, balance, all that—and watched her lover suck in a deep, unnecessary breath at the move. 

Granted her underwear had long since been sacrificed to the evil gods of this hell dimension, so that probably had something to do with his reaction. He’d seen her stretch before, after all. Seen her go through her entire morning calisthenics routine, naked, for that matter. Though, he’d never let her finish it, come to that.

By the time she was in the process of duplicating the move with the other leg he was clenching every muscle in his body to keep from touching her, which was really excellent for her ego. This barely counted as a striptease. She kicked off the charcoal-gray pinstripe, all tattered by scales, dropped them to the floor. “Of course, I suppose I could just go around naked, since to the rest of this dimension I probably only count as some kind of human concubine…”

“Slayer, if you don’t touch me soon I’m gonna pop like champagne.” He was fighting not to go into game face. She could see it in the amber light kindling in his eyes. 

She’d take care of that. She wanted the demon too… but not just yet. 

Lying full-length on his body so that his cock was trapped between her legs, if nowhere near where it wanted to be just yet, she held him still and, propping herself up, looked him straight in those gold-tinged azure eyes. “I love you,” she told him softly.

“Buffy…” he whispered, the way he always did when he was completely undone. And his _face_…

She didn’t wait for him to try to find the words. Just bent her head to his mouth.

It was easy enough to start with kissing him. She could pour everything she was feeling into that exercise; could communicate with that familiar action everything he needed to know. Could control the situation as well; let him know what her intentions were, set the tone from the outset. Arched over his body when his arms came around her, trying to pull her close; caught his wrists and set him down, flat and away. And continued to kiss him; long and slow and gentle, exploring his mouth unhurriedly and without demand in a way that she had never done before with him, throughout their entire association.

Well. Except for that one time. But they had been under a spell, then. 

Spike had always been an excellent kisser. Half the time she had had to use fire and hunger and pure instinct just to keep up. This was, in many ways, a test for her; but at least she felt on safe ground here, mouth to mouth with him. Unnerving as it was to attempt to let him know everything he needed to know in this way… it was a hell of a lot easier to contemplate telling him by kissing him than it was to face, just yet, the slightly more daunting prospect of showing him with the rest of his body. 

He seemed floored enough by just this part. Which helped, she had to admit, with her confidence issues going forward. Because… she had tried this already and failed, the night before the end of the world. Obviously it had failed, or he would have believed her when she had told him she loved him. But then, maybe there had been too much baggage that night. Too many assumptions. Too much weariness, and blame, and too many old wounds not yet cleansed by fire. Too many expectations, or not enough left anymore, between them; too many old patterns to overcome in one short night to contemplate starting over, then, at the end of things. 

That night, she had come to him, after thinking long and hard about just letting it be, and going gentle into that good night. Just sleeping in his arms again, alone together in their cowardice. But she had never been a coward. And the thought of never touching him again, after everything, while the world crumbled around them…

The next day, they might all be dead. 

So she had gone. Faced him. Pushed the amulet from his pillow and tried to show him; for the first time, between them, with gentle hands and soft eyes. 

He had gone with her, of course, in the end, after a few startled protestations. Gone with her as always, full in the wonder that she would touch him at all, and that he was permitted the grace to touch her in return. But… somehow she had failed to communicate to him then the one thing that had been most imperative that he take into tomorrow. ‘I’m here with _you_, Spike.’ That he was in her heart. That she did in fact love him, in whatever form that might take, going forward; as far, at that point, as she could look to see. 

She supposed now, that two people could in fact know each other’s bodies too well sometimes to hear each other’s hearts.

But the world was not ending anymore. They were long past that; and she could not fail him this time. So she stayed aware; of everything. Stayed conscious of every move, every sound, every twitch. Did nothing on autopilot, took nothing for granted. Kept things forcibly slow and continued to lavish attention on every little part of him—worrying at his lips with her own, and lightly with her teeth, nudging his mouth where she wanted it to go with her tongue and settling back in for longer forays, until he was groaning, arching up beneath her, his hips setting up an already-insistent rhythm sort of midair between her thighs. 

“Shh,” she told him gently, and gave him an admonitory nip on his lower lip. “Slow down. This is going to take a while.”

He groaned and let his head fall back, panting a little. “Bloody hell, Buffy, you’re trying to kill me.”

“No,” she whispered back, and leaned over to look into his eyes. Caught both wrists in one hand so she could loose the other to run a caressing hand along his cheek. “I’m trying to love you.”

His eyes opened on hers; softened from desperation to glow like blue lamps in the dim light. She thought they might be suspiciously wet. “Christ, Buffy, I…”

She laid a finger lightly over his lips to quiet him and dipped lower, kissing his jaw as she went. Settled herself into his neck, continued down toward his shoulder. “Let me love you,” she whispered low, and prayed she could do this right. That she could live up to advertising. 

That she would not completely fail. 

“Oh… Sodding… God.” As she released his wrists he clenched them once in the sheets and then relaxed utterly to her ministrations. 

The problem was, she realized as she ran her hands tentatively over his shoulders, her lips over his throat, she wasn’t entirely confident in how to proceed. Like, she kind of thought that Spike would be pretty okay with just about anything she wanted to do to, or with, him. He always had been before, and to be fair he had always seemed hungry for anything she might ever do that remotely seemed like she wanted to touch him, do more with him than just use him to make her own body feel good (a memory that ashamed her, now, in retrospect). But the fact remained that her past history with attempts at making love to guys was sort of… stifled. 

There had been Angel, who had pretty much made sure she knew that it was _his_ job to do things to _her_ (though in hindsight the things he had done had pretty much focused on her breasts and upward). They had spent a lot of time on kissing, touching, and he had let her touch him all over, yeah, but he had kept her mouth focused on his mouth, his shoulders maybe, and that was about it. There had been a clear expectation that she was to let _him_ make love to her. Maybe if they had had more time… /But we all know what happened with that./

And Parker… Well. Parker had been fun, yeah, and more mutual, but… Mostly about fun. She’d done things to and with him, but it had been a one-night stand. She hadn’t known him well enough to get adventurous. And, the less said about that the better. 

Riley. Well, she had done a lot more exploring of Riley’s body. And he had let her. He had been sweet, and earnest, and had been willing to allow for much mutual lovemaking. He had, after all, loved her very much. She could admit that now without undue regret. But. He had had kind of a hang-up about things after a certain point; a sort of, ‘guys make love to women’ thing. It had been like he’d thought that women could definitely _touch_ guys, for sure use their mouths in certain proscribed zones—he had never had a problem with blow jobs, not that she knew any guys who did—but he had been lukewarm about nipple stuff. He’d been fine with hands in places, mouths in the general neck/torso area… but too much more than that and it was like he thought a guy just became… unmanly or something from the excess attention. 

In comparison… Well. She had already long since done things with Spike that she couldn’t imagine doing with the vanilla Riley. Done things that, as Spike put it, she couldn’t spell—probably couldn’t pronounce, even—and would probably blush about if they ever got down to actually discussing them. She had had her hands in places on him that were best not mentioned in polite company—and vice versa—and good times were had by all. And yet there were places on him she had for sure not kissed, or stroked, or…

She probably hadn’t even done this much with him before now. And judging by the way he was responding to just her gentle little nipping kisses to his neck and throat, she could do a lot more and he’d be fine with it. 

And so would she, for that matter. Because whether she once would have admitted it or not, there was not an inch of him that she did not find attractive. Not to mention that, based on current indications, she somehow thought she could probably kiss just about every centimeter of his long, lovely body and he would not particularly mind. However… “How do you want me to love you, Spike?” Sometimes a girl’s confidence needed a boost.

“Slayer,” he groaned, arching a little beneath her in search of pressure, “you can do any bloody thing you want to me. I’m all fucking yours. Have been all bloody yours since the first bleeding day I ever saw you, yeah? Just… Christ… Touch me…”

/Interesting./ “Since the first day?” she asked, cocking her head at him.

“Buffy!”

Smiling, feeling entirely better about this whole thing, she filed that one away for future conversation and, with a slightly more playful nip to his now-corded neck that made him buck and curse, slid down to kiss her way further along his wonderfully sleek body; over the dip of his sternum and down along his (really amazing) chest. Kind of fun to ignore his groans as she mashed his cock down between them in doing so. She had to slap his butt lightly in remonstration when his hips started up on their own, trying to get in a few bonus thrusts edgewise against her hip. 

He subsided then, muttering things about evil, cruel women, and went so still it turned into one of those unnerving vampire things where he didn’t even pretend to breathe for, like, ten minutes straight except when he was muttering stuff. Which would’ve been distracting if it was the first time, but she was used to it by now and just ignored him to run her tongue along his nipples, flicking and twisting the way she knew for a fact he liked. (Past history really did help, sometimes.) Enjoyed his very vocal noises of appreciation—nice of him to let her know what he liked; it was almost like he knew she needed the encouragement—and allowing her fingernails to trace with just the slightest pressure over each rib so that he finally sucked in his breath as she counted them. 

The way he arched beneath her touch and kick-started back into the totally unnecessary breathing thing defined the muscles of his abdomen in remarkable fashion, and she paused for a moment to admire the declivity between ribcage and belly, pondering the miracle of this supposedly dead man under her hands and lips who was and had always been so much more alive to her touch than anyone she had ever known. Her lips, lost in the dip of his solar plexus, listening to the silence of this heart that still, somehow, inexplicably beat for only her, her hands found his arms…

And she was arrested, for possibly the first time, by the contrast between the (by comparison) darker skin on his forearms and the pale, almost translucent flesh on the tender undersides. She turned her cheek to his abdomen for a moment to pull one arm over closer—the right, since that was the one she could reach—ran the backs of her fingernails lightly along the soft skin there. Felt him shiver and his flesh contract under her touch. Watched the normally-still, borrowed blood purl and hasten in vessels clearly seen through layers of pale, vulnerable-looking flesh, like it was chasing her palpations. 

He had a little scar she had never seen before; just below his elbow, that ran around from the underside to lead through into the sparse hair of his upper arm, and it made her wonder what could have damaged a vampire so, or if that had occurred before, in his human life. She traced it with one finger; a touch so light it was barely there, and felt him shake from it. “That’s you,” she whispered softly, and then ran her fingertips down again; in a long sweep from wrist to elbow. “Tough vampire hide. But underneath still so soft and beautiful…”

He arched a little under her, shivering. “Don’t tell anyone, Slayer.”

Smiling again, she lifted to kiss him there, on the scar, on the sensitive skin of his vulnerable inner arm. Felt him tremble. Liked it enough to pull the other arm over and trace it the same way, just to see another delicious twin to that little tremor before she turned her attention back to his abdomen, and that amazing… God, whatever-pack he had. Went on kissing her way downward, and truly she was just enjoying herself at this point. But in contrast to other times, she was paying attention as much to his reactions as to her own explorations so that she could linger where he seemed to react most. 

She also dallied just for the hell of it in places that were not at all goal-oriented, which would have been anathema before. The arms were one. Admiring him just for the sake of admiring him. But the playful _‘pfft’_ she made into his navel (which, she had to admit, was totally unfair and made him curl up in shock and, yes, squeal, try to bat her away as if he had been violated, cursing and making improper comments about insane females) would have been entirely outside of her permissible repertoire with him in their previous iteration. 

Hell. She would never have tried that with Riley, even. It would have cut too much into his manly, soldierly dignity. She might have tried it with Angel, someday, if they had ever had the chance to continue being all loverly, but best not to think of Angel right now. “So,” she inquired innocently, “belly-button is a no-fly zone?”

He uncurled a little to eye her warily. “Nothing’s a no-go with you, Buffy, but you bloody well surprised me! What the hell _was_ that?”

She grinned at him and blew lightly across the area once more, enjoying the shivers her warm breath produced; the goosebumps she could see popping up all over his belly skin. “I dunno. I think it’s cute.” She poked a finger at his neat little knot of a navel, regarded it with interest. “They did it different back then, huh?”

“Bloody hell!” he half-shouted, jumping again, and batted once more at her finger, clearly sensitive and acting on instinct. “Yeah, they didn’t have hospitals and all that rot, you just tied it off and went on with life…”

She set herself up on her elbows to regard the tiny little outie with an affectionate smirk. “Well, it’s cute.” Deciding to have mercy, she picked up her trek once more to move ever lower on his body, his breath catching as she did so.

“Cute,” he grumbled. His breath hitched again as her hair tickled down along his flanks. But then, his too-swollen cock had basically been bouncing and crashing along her body the entire time she’d been headed lazily south in her slow mission to poke and prod at all the places she’d never bothered to check out before, so she supposed he could be forgiven for being a little over-tense by now. 

She thought it might be fun to make it worse. Besides; she wasn’t done exploring a body she had somehow managed to look at very little despite making very thorough use of it over the course of almost a half a year a while back. “You know, I think I’ve never…” She dipped her head, skirting around his now exceedingly stressed-looking cock. In passing she smiled up at the poor, bobbing thing. “You should get that looked at. It looks painful.”

“Slayer, you’re a fucking menace.” His voice was strained.

“What? I’m just loving you.” She did her best to use her most innocent-sounding voice as she dipped her head to taste that lovely cut between his thigh and flank…

“Oh, _fuck!”_ he shouted, and arched up to her mouth. She lifted her head just enough to glance up, saw the tension humming in his body, the way he had fisted the blankets, and felt vindicated.

He’d done that to her often enough. Nice to know he was as sensitive there as she was. 

Sliding one hand free of the sheets, she cupped his balls contemplatively—he jerked spasmodically as she did so, for which she did not blame him, since she had not always been so gentle to his tender bits in past assignations—and dipped her head around to the other flank. Both inguinal curves needed attention, clearly. As did his perineum, because it was kind of fun to hear him make those noises he made when she prodded him there. Just a gentle little caress though, because she still wanted a little more time to... 

He shuddered some more as her hair brushed ticklishly over his thighs… and then, out of nowhere, he was grating out the words, hips rocking against her fingertips. “Fucking Christ, Buffy, I don’t know how much more of this I can… Fuck.”

She stilled her fingers and lifted her head to watch him, actually surprised. His human countenance was a rictus almost as ridged as if he were in game face. His knuckles were whiter than even a vampire’s had a right to be, his cock an impressive shade of scarlet-edging-on-plum; in and of itself a feat considering how little blood he had to have left in reserve in his body. Every single muscle in said body—and God knew he had plenty—was exquisitely defined and hard as a rock. You could bounce a quarter off of him. “Spike, you’ve been on this Earth for how many years? And you can’t take a little foreplay?”

His head jerked up to regard her balefully, blue eyes flickering back and forth between azure and amber to tell her who she was talking to. Both man and demon. “Haven’t had you. Never had you. Doing this to me.” His head dropped back to the decadent bed, tossed a little from side to side. “Never had anyone love me like this.”

Her heart sank like a rock. /Oh./ He’d been with Drusilla for over a hundred years and they’d never… _She’d_ never…

Well, she supposed they hadn’t, if their vamp idea of love was tying someone up and torturing them. And she had seen a lot of what passed for good sex from his demon side. Not that that hadn’t been fun, and definitely exciting. But there was clearly a side of Spike that had always wanted this; _this_ kind of loving.

And had, apparently, never gotten it. Even as the physical urgency beat off of him in palpable waves, he was eating this up. His eyes were glowing, his pupils dilated so wide she could barely see the ring of blue amid the dark, amber-washed hunger of his gaze. “Don’t worry,” she told him very softly. “I’m almost done. And then I’ll take care of you.”

“Oh, sodding Christ.” He took another sizable handful of the bedclothes and bore down for the ride.

Reaching out with her left—she might as well give him a helping hand—she gripped the base of his cock for a second, gave him a (by her standards) gentle squeeze that despite all that wrung a groan out of him even as it managed to make his body subside somewhat back to the bed, and moved down to survey his thighs. Which were, like the rest of him, utterly gorgeous… and ultimately defined at the moment. Mmm. 

Lifting one leg with her right hand, she kissed the tender inside curve of flesh, smiling at the way his uber-tense muscle literally fluttered under her lips. No pulse, of course, but what did that matter when you had a person’s entire body literally falling apart at your every touch? It was enough, and she trailed the muscular vibrations down to the inside of his knee. Tickled the back of said knee with her fingertips, so that he produced a fascinating sound—suspiciously like a ‘yip!’ of protest—as she prodded lightly at the sensitive zone, then with a light kiss to the inside edge of his calf—his toes were at this point lightly paddling the sheets, his toes clenching and unclenching on the bed and, as she glanced up to survey the terrain, so was his ass, and God, he was exquisitely on the edge—trailed her fingernails lightly along the arch of one really beautifully-made foot. 

He shuddered again. And started chanting. Her name, mixed in with a lot of other stuff, as she started up from the opposite foot. Curses in other languages? She thought she recognized some Fyarl in there, maybe… and something that sounded like… Chinese?

By the time she made it back up to his groin, and, fascinated by his gyrations, dug her nails just a little into his flexing buttocks, he was muttering something very repetitive in what she knew for sure was Latin. “What are you saying?” she asked, fascinated.

“Conjugating bloody verbs,” he told her tightly, through clenched teeth. “Backward, forward, any way I can remember ‘em. I’d do the sodding Lord’s Prayer if I could get away with it without bursting into flames, but I’m a sodding vampire, so I don’t have that bleeding option.” His eyes were closed tight, and he sounded like he was dying. His long-unattended cock was weeping, almost purple, and damn near screaming for attention. She had, in fact, never seen it like this; how did he have that much blood left in his body, with the starvation diet he’d been on? “Buffy, for Chrissakes!” His entire body was arched up toward her, and incoherent noises escaped his throat in little huffs between his words.

She was amazed he was making any sense at all, actually. 

She’d had her fun. Time to take pity on him. 

He didn’t realize what she was about at first, so sunk was he in his own little world of simple rules like, ‘Don’t come yet’ and ‘Just wait’ and ‘Stand it long as you can’. Which was why he jerked up and let out a roar like she’d shocked him with a cattle prod when she, without further ceremony, caught him once more by the pulsing base of his cock and impaled herself in one swift motion.

It was amazing how sopping wet and ready you could get by spending all that time working over another person.

She knew he wouldn’t last long, and that was fine. He’d get his revenge on her next time. He’d never not taken care of her, so she wasn’t even worried about it. This was about him, right now, so she just watched him, rocking as she did, drawing him slowly in and out of her body on long, regular strokes coordinated by her strong, toned thighs, hands on her knees so that she could keep her eyes on his face. Didn’t lean back to take her own pleasure; not yet. 

She wanted to see him.

He had no rhythm. Not right now. He just jerked spasmodically up, seeking, muttering things like, “Oh Christ, Buffy,” and “Oh bloody hell, Slayer” and other things that she was sure meant basically the same thing in the other fourteen or whatever languages he spoke. And God, she’d forgotten how much she loved the feel of him. The glide and slide of him; so much better than it had been with Riley, or Parker. Though, granted, with Parker there had been a condom, so it probably wasn’t a good comparison; but after a while when she and Riley had been together for long enough they had stopped using condoms, since she was always on birth control—a Slayer wandering around bleeding once a month was just a bad plan in general, not to mention the pesky fatigue and cramps and all that—and it had given her plenty of opportunity to recognize something for which, at that point in her life, she had had only one night’s basis of comparison.

She preferred intact guys. Maybe it was just an imprinting thing, since her first time had been with a guy from another century, when circumcision wasn’t really the norm except if you were Jewish or whatever, but Angel had been the same way, the one time they had been together. Which had really helped with the whole virgin thing, when it came to making things easier. Because, friction-wise, the extra skin, the slip and glide of it, was just so much nicer. Especially if sex went on for a longish time—and god knew some of the times she had had sex with both Riley—though that had been under a spell—and Spike—which had so not required a spell, by the way—that little added reduction in friction had meant no need for lube, because intact guys’ bodies helped with that. And just the way their bodies worked, the way they moved was different; they thrust more like a flow-y shark in the water, low and intent instead of all hard and ramming like they needed all the impact they could get just to get off.

And when it came to giving them head… The difference in sensitivity was off the charts. Something, she figured, about having the head of the cock covered in skin most of the time so it wasn’t rubbing on pants and stuff, getting desensitized. When it did get attention it was always soft and slick and ready for action. Spike had always reacted like she was ripping his guts out whenever she got her mouth on him; just putting her tongue on his intact frenulum always made him half-fall apart. 

You could get a guy off in half the time and with a lot less effort, more with your mouth and tongue and with a lot less neck and body action, she’d found, when they were intact. Riley had taken so much more time, and had required so much more bobbing and hand-work and sucking and swallowing to give him a happy, whereas Spike…

Spike spent half his time controlling himself in the midst of what appeared to be a whirlwind of sensation. Kind of like her, when he was down there making sure to get her off. And, he was never ashamed of it. 

Right now he looked like he was on some kind of teeter-totter between life and death, inside her. “Buffy, Buffy, Buffy,” he chanted, every muscle tense. Surged up… Went taut…

And fought to wait.

“Go ahead,” she whispered to him. “I want to watch you.”

“Oh, Christ,” he whispered back, and lost it, the familiar cool rush of a vampire’s orgasm filling her in impressively long and repeated spurts that wrung a juddering, broken moan from his throat. 

A moan that came out, yet again, in the shape of her name.

She went on moving till he was done before she lay back down on along his cool body. She was still heated and throbbing, her own body demanding he finish what they’d started but ready to wait for her own turn. /Calm down/ she told herself sternly. /There’s plenty of time./ 

Plenty of time in a hell that was feeling remarkably like heaven right now, and wasn’t it just like them that they had finally figured out how to be a couple _here_, in a place like this, when they had never managed it back home? “Hey. You okay?”

He looked utterly and completely blissed out. “Mmmm.”

Well. That was a first. Reducing William the Bloody to monosyllables. “Guess that’s a yes.”

He made a sort of mumble-noise and then, with a faint rustle-grumble of effort, flung one arm up over his eyes like he was shading them from some bizarre radiance only he could see. Pried one eye open to squint at her. He kind of looked like he had a hangover. “Only you, Buffy.”

/Okay?/ “Only me what?” she asked warily. What if he told her, now, after everything, that she’d done something wrong, or…

“Can make a bloke who’s meant to go to hell feel like he’s in heaven.” He propped himself up on one elbow then to shoot her a faintly sardonic look. The movement shook her a little off of his chest so that she sort of fell to one side… but such was her relief that she barely even noticed. “Got to have a screw loose if we could only manage to get on this well in a hell dimension, yeah?”

Relief filled her despite the ironic tone of his observation. He’d liked it. That was enough to make her feel sort of… accomplished. /And, now we’re on the same page enough to think like each other./ She had to admit that was kind of freaky; had to put aside for a moment wondering just exactly how she felt about _that_ little detail. “Yeah, well,” she managed, and pushed herself up a little into a sort of a kneeling position over him… which had the unfortunate side-effect of making him slither out of her, and god, she hated that feeling. Like losing a limb. “Clearly I’m not the best at staying in heaven anyway. The closest I’ve ever found to being back there in the last couple of years is when you’ve…” She stopped, blushing.

“Oho!” That got him up on his other elbow. “When I have my tongue in your lovely little quim, is it?” he asked astutely, and reached out one hand to brush her cheek. His other arm, now cocked lazily across his knee, opened to cup her thigh suggestively. “You want me to sort you out, luv?”

“I want you,” she answered huskily. “God, yes.”

He surged closer, catching her around her waist to pull her in. She went with it, unfolding her arms to slide them around his neck. And caught a slightly uncertain look in his eyes as she neared him, a hint of wariness about his movements. “What?”

“I’d love to…” He halted, and the uncertainty built to a pitch that made her frankly anxious. 

“What, Spike? Spit it out.” Which was a little harsh, but he was making her feel belatedly nervous, now that they were well into uncharted relationship territory.

He looked away a little, not quite meeting her eyes. “I’d love to make love to you, too, Buffy, if you’ll have me. I know you’ve never wanted me to do that before, but you’ve just… What you’ve just done for me… Christ, I’d just really… love to give you that. I dunno if anyone’s ever really shown you what you’re worth, but I’ve always wanted to let you know how much I… I treasure you, and…”

Her heart melted. He was taking a chance, really laying it all out there; a big deal for him since in their past she would no doubt have used his show of vulnerability as another stick to beat him with. 

He was taking a ton on faith right now, based on the last months of their time together on the hellmouth, and on their last few days together here in LA, and, just… “Spike, please. I’d actually really love it if you would…” She could say it, even if it sounded completely alien to her, the words like a foreign language. He needed to hear it. “…Make love to me. I’d really…”

She never got to finish what she was saying—which, thank god—before he had her flat on her back with her head down by the footboard somewhere, eyes blazing blue-gold on hers. “Christ, I love you, you brave chit.” And then he was there, mouth on her, hungry and yet somehow loving, setting her on fire. 

He had always been able to set her on fire; no matter how frozen she had been. Something about his cool touch had made flames lick up her skin from the start; a crazed juxtaposition to their roles. He was a vampire. Her job was to turn him to ashes; and yet, though cool under her hands he could make her burst into flames when nothing else left on Earth could kindle her passions. And though his job was to turn her cold, send her into the ground, end it all... she had known somehow that he never would. Because the fact was… all he ever seemed to do was to light her on fire. With rage, first, then irritation, like a constant burr under her skin… and then with wanting; a burning, endless need that rampaged through her flesh like a conflagration that could never be spent. It was a flame that could never be slaked save with the coolth that came when he was inside her, and they were completed; when he came in her and she was still embers from the fires he had set in her flesh. When, for a moment, she knew for sure that she was alive, and would never die.

But the problem had once been that he had been able to make her feel that way within her heart, as well; with the look in his eyes. With a simple word, or a touch. And that had not been permitted. Not once. Not then. Because he shouldn’t be the one. It could never be real. Not _him_. Not someone so cold. Not someone without the spark.

And he knew it. So he had gone out and gotten that damn spark for her… and set himself afire. Until he had burned to ashes. For her. 

So she _had_ turned him to ashes, in the end; not with an actual stake through the heart but with a figurative one that was her twisted, unforgiving love. And yet somehow he was back; back here with her anyway. Because he was never free of her; and she had no idea how she deserved him. But she had been cold again, and needed his fire to go on. The scar on her hand was incomplete without the matching one on his… and she had been wandering around in the dark, looking for the light in his eyes. 

Without him in her heart she would never find her way back to the sun. 

She reached out, desperately, caught his scarred hand in hers. Gripped it, hard, startling him as he loomed over her, eyes dazzlingly bright in the low, orange light from outside. “You can be in my day, here,” she told him quietly.

“Yeah,” he answered, curious but willing to go with it. “It’s a bloody strange dimension, but I’m not complaining.” He leaned to one side, reached out with his free hand to stroke her hair away from her face. “Sodding gift to look at you in the light; walk beside you here. For however long it lasts.”

“I came to you because no matter how dark it was, when you looked at me you always saw the sun. And I knew I wasn’t cold.”

Something in his face broke, and he lowered his forehead to hers. “Slayer… Bloody hell.”

“How can you give me so much more when your heart doesn’t even beat, than I ever gave you?”

His right hand tightened in hers, his left sliding down from hair to shoulder to cup under her waist and pull her close. “Always did have to be a bleeding rebel.” He kissed her shoulder, stared urgently into her eyes. “You’ve no idea what you give me, pet.”

She reached up with her free hand to push the stray curls away from his forehead, gently nudging his face up into her view. “You started mine again.”

He watched her for a moment, eyes searching hers, and then… “Oh, Christ, Buffy.” And then his arms were around her, pulling her close; holding her like she was the most precious thing on Earth. 

She knew she would cry now if he kissed her. Tried to turn away; because she had been too open. She had let too much out, had shown too much of herself. She could feel the panic rising, had to turn away, had to hide…

He abruptly let go of their clasped hands to catch her face between his palms. Held her eyes still with his so that she was forced to meet his gaze. “No, Slayer,” he whispered, staring into her; and kept doing it until the tears welled. “I’m here; same as you were for me.”

“Dammit, Spike.” Her breath hitched. 

“Yeah, I know. But turnabout’s fair play, yeah?” And, taking pity on her, he brought his mouth to hers, lifted her bodily, arms sliding around her… and began to kiss her in a way he had never done before. Slow, languorous, sinking into her mouth, and god, he had to hate this; he could probably taste her tears, she was a silly, stupid mess waiting to happen, she had to get away…

“Shh. Stop hiding. You think you can scare me off, luv?”

Her first instinct was to fight. To shove him away, escape at all costs. But…

/But we don’t do that anymore. _I_ don’t do that anymore./ Except… 

What did that leave her? 

She honestly had no idea. How to be vulnerable, how to let him _see_ her like this, how to…

These were all parts of herself that had died long ago. Before him. When she had sent Angel to hell with Acathla. So long ago it seemed… Well, it really was another life. Another her. A much younger her who could cry, and confess to a lover, and seek comfort, and…

And he wanted that. Wanted to be that for her. She knew that Spike had only ever wanted to love her. 

It was the one crime he had ever committed which was unpardonable. And the one sin which she wished to commit above all others was to let him. It cracked her heart open over and over again to hear him say it; to ask for the one thing she could not do, and survive. “Let me _love_ you, Buffy.” Murmuring it, lips trailing over her cheeks, over her lips, over her jaw. “Just let me love you the way you did me, and it’ll be alright. I promise…”

The very thought terrified her to her marrow. But without fight, without flight, what was left? 

She couldn’t freeze. That would be unfair. Couldn’t swing. They’d gone past that. Couldn’t take this back, or flee. 

And that left only one course of action. To go deeper. Become even more vulnerable. “Spike…” And she could hear her voice shaking. “I don’t know how. I need help, here.”

His head rose immediately from his ministrations, and he was meeting her eyes and lightly stroking her face once more. Listening. 

She had to be fair. Do this right. “This is why Riley left. This is…” Oh God. “This is why I hurt you. This is why… all of it. Fight, or flight… or freeze. But never let anyone in. Never…” She felt so broken, cut her eyes away. “Because I don’t know _how_. I don’t know how to be with you.” She felt like such a monster; so much more the monster than he had ever been, admitting it now, after all she had done to him, but… “It’s not you. It was never you. It was _always_ me. God, Spike; I’m so messed up…” She sniffled, terribly embarrassed, sure he would kick her out of the bed, sure he would say he didn’t have time for this kind of baggage…

And then his arms were around her again and he had her up against his chest… and he was… Oh, wow. Rocking her against him. “Oh, sodding God, Buffy, of course you don’t. What with everything, it’s amazing you even managed to keep the friends you had and all that rubbish. Anyone else would be fitted for a tin hat by now, but you’re too bleeding strong, innit? So you just armored up and got stronger.”

“Something like that,” she mumbled into his chest, and god this was humiliating. Why couldn’t she just find a way to run away?

He was silent for a moment, still rocking her slowly against his chest. When he spoke up again, she thought she heard a faint smile in his voice. “I’ve got time, Slayer. You might’ve noticed I’m not going anywhere…”

She had to half-laugh at that, because if she didn’t she’d start crying. God knew he’d proven that over the years. Even when he’d hidden himself away from her he’d gone on loving her, all stupidly alone in some dumb green cell like a monk, the idiot. /You didn’t do it very well, but it wasn’t like I gave you a ton of choices that came out real well for you before that. And you’ve never been the best at making good choices on the best days, anyway. You doof./ But he had always excelled at loving her, for better or worse. 

It was the one thing he’d always been good at. No matter whatever else he had failed at, or whether she deserved…

Her breath hitched again.

“How about,” the low, rumbling voice went on inexorably, and now his hand was caressing her hair; long, even strokes that calmed her like she was some sort of cat being petted, “we remember that it’s just the two of us here, and lay here, no pressure. Then we can just be how we’ve always been; and if you wanna give this another go sometime, maybe we can take off some of that armor. Bit by bit, like, till we get down to where the real Buffy is, underneath?”

He was giving her the option to back down. And dammit, she really wanted to take it. But something about the offer pissed her off, suddenly; put her back up. Like he was saying she was too much of a coward to power through this, or… 

Which was dumb, and she knew it. This was not about powering through something. This was an emotional thing, not something she could wrestle with Slayer strength or defeat with combat skills or spar with until she beat it down into the dirt. She couldn’t dust her own issues. But. 

Dammit. “Can we just try?”

He pulled away from her a little to look her straight in the eye, as ridiculously patient and loving with her as ever. “There’s no hurry, luv.”

She closed her eyes briefly. Drew in and let out a breath. Opened them to meet his gaze, feeling a little better about her decision. “I know. But I want…” She stumbled a little over it, but she also knew it to be true. “I want to try to take off some of my armor with you.”

She felt the tremor run through him. “If you’re sure, pet. If you change your mind at all, even in the middle of things, that’s fine, yeah?”

She nodded, well aware he’d never push her; ever again. He’d always let her lead before, except that one time. And that... “I know.”

“Alright.” He lifted one hand to caress her hair away from her face, expression a little conflicted. Hesitated. “If… If I feel you freeze up, though, I’m going to stop.” His face tightened a little. “I can’t risk…”

She nodded once, fast, to cut him off before he said it. “I get it. I’ll try to speak up.”

He tugged her closer then, familiar cool hands sliding around to catch her thighs and sling them gently around his hips. The sheets had somehow become thoroughly entangled with their bodies; a mildly irritating wedge between them. She reached down to tear them away in a fit of impatience, tossed them aside, and caught his grin of acknowledgment at her frustrated attempt at regaining some modicum of control. With a sigh for his tolerant amusement she flung her arms around his neck and just sat expectantly, waiting for his next move with eyebrows raised.

“Put enough bleeding pressure on a bloke, will you?” he asked, but it was a rhetorical question, and spoken with that faint tilt to his head and that tiny half-smile tugging at the corners of his lips that said he was busy admiring her forthrightness or something similar at the moment. “You’re a right brilliant bint, anyone ever tell you that?”

Buffy smiled back, exasperated. He always glowed at her like this, when she’d done nothing to deserve it. “In a way I’ll actually believe it? Just you. I wish to God I knew why.”

His expression turned equally exasperated. “Because you’re bloody courageous as hell, you daft bird,” he informed her seriously, and tugged her face down so that he could kiss her.

She felt on familiar enough ground, with these jocular compliments delivered in half-insulting, backhanded Spike verbiage, to accept the kiss and settle in for the ride. Except that once he had her where he wanted her, he once more and almost immediately tamed the kiss to something slow, appreciative; nudging her up and open, tilting his head to draw her in… Bringing her closer. Deeper. Making it last. It was like he had taken one of his old records of one of their heated, fierce kisses from the past, and slowed it down from the tiny 45 rpms to one of those slow, romantic 78s you saw in movies like _‘Dirty Dancing’._ Something you’d slow-dance to, and oh, _god_, she’d known he was good with his mouth—she had, after all, been the recipient of all the incredible things that mouth could do further south and on numerous occasions—but give Spike the time to really spend on kissing and he could make a girl very happy just with that. 

And then to her almost-regret his lips were moving away, down along her cheek; up to kiss over her eyelids. Behind her ear; down behind and along her jaw. Her neck… So many times they’d done this; but fast. Fast enough for her not to think. Right now she could think. She could think too much; about what she deserved and what she did not, and…

“Just feel it, pet. Don’t think. Just feel.”

“What even is that? Can you read my mind?”

He laughed against her throat; a smug vampire chuckle, the jerk, and nibbled lightly at the tender flesh in the dip behind her collarbone. “Your body. Hear your heartbeat. Smell your pheromones. Right useful side-effect of hunting instincts when you use ‘em for sex.”

“Damn…” He found his bite mark then and did something really impossibly hot with his tongue and teeth just that scrambled her brain and sent fireworks in a direct line to her clit, and she forgot what she was about to say. Accuse him of. Whatever. “Nnnn… Vampire…”

“Guilty.” Was he _sniffing_ her?

Whatever. 

She was losing track of what was happening. Somewhere along the way he was laying her back down, and his mouth was making its torturous way south with excruciating slowness; past her collarbones now, and her nipples were really confused as to what the holdup was, and his hands were being incredibly, confusingly gentle as they stroked up and down the insides of her arms; just two fingers trailing lightly along the tender flesh. Up, down, and up… and oh god, she’d been here for two weeks. What if he got turned off by her being all… fluffy? After all, she wasn’t exactly herself, here, after two weeks away from regular hygiene equipment like razors and loofahs. She’d done her best with weird spells and sparing sponge baths and stuff, but… 

And then there was the whole thing where she knew what he loved best to do with her, too, speaking of, and what if…

“Hush.” His fingertips drifted through the hair under her arm while his lips trailed along the side of her breast, and she trembled, fighting the urge to clamp her arm shut. 

“I’m…”

To her complete shock, he shoved his face right up _in there_ and _nuzzled; _and now he was actually sounding exasperated. “Buffy, women have been shaving things for less than sixty years. You’re daft if you think I haven’t seen this before. Enjoyed it even.”

His cool breath was unexpectedly making her toes curl. The ticklish feel of it, and… “I…”

“Understand you bein’ self-conscious about it, but it’s gonna be a long damn life in hell if you’re gonna worry about it, yeah? Doesn’t worry me.” But he had mercy enough to move away, slip back down to somewhere in the vicinity of her throat. 

It was, however, food for thought enough to distract her long enough that she barely noticed at first the way his fingers were now brushing at the insides of her elbows. Until they tickled, making her jump. The sensation brought her back out of her half-daze, and her eyes zeroed in on his nails. “When did you find nail polish again?” she demanded, stunned at his scavenging ability.

He lifted away to eye her with a gimlet glare. “Am I gonna have to bite you to calm you down?”

That earned him a return glare. “Shut up. I said I was having a hard time.” She felt inadequate enough without…

He just shook his head and, pulling one arm toward him very firmly, he settled himself down across her body and moved his lips into the tender pocket of her inner elbow. She jumped again. Was he actually going to bite her already? “Spike?”

“Relax.” And paradoxically, her heart slowed obediently even as he began to do things with his mouth—there, of all places—that had exactly nothing to do with biting but felt…

/Oh God./ She was pretty sure no one had done anything remotely like that to that part of her anatomy. “Spike, what are you…”

“Hush. Just feel, remember?”

It was ticklish, and yet so sensitive that she… She was going to climb out of her skin, and yet…

No way her hips should be going from that! No way at all, and she cursed at herself for her lack of discipline. And her eyes caught sight again of the bizarre image of his newly-painted, black nails against the pale skin of her inner arm… “Seriously, though, where did you get the…”

He lifted his head away to sigh at her. “The girls found me some, alright? They can find you some as well, and we can have a night in and paint each other’s nails if you like, yeah? Only let me finish seeing to you first, you daft bint, before you drive me straight off my trolley?”

She felt a sharp retort rise in her. It escaped before she could manage to grab onto it. “You’re going to drive me off mine if you keep doing weird, ticklish things to parts of me that aren’t…” She waved her free hand around to encompass all that she couldn’t think to say about all this. After all, she wasn’t used to… well, really, any of this with him. He usually just got right down to business with her. He had spent a good half their mutual sex lives with his face cheerfully buried between her legs, and a girl got used to that sort of thing really quickly. It made all this… extraneous exploration seem…

Well, kind of superfluous. And weird. “I mean, it’s my _arm!” _

He lifted a brow and, with a growl, dove very abruptly to pin her down. Caught the other arm and pulled it firmly toward him, turned the wrist over, and drove in toward the underside. “You liked it. Felt your hips goin’. Smelled you warmin’ up to me…”

/Okay, goddammit!/ She squirmed in some kind of bizarre mix of discomfort and pleasure as he kissed his way doggedly up from wrist to elbow, struggling with it. Struggling to _feel_, because he was right, and what was her hang-up? “You’re totally unfair with your stupid vampire senses,” she accused finally, and gave in, gasping and arching up in startlement as his lips latched on firmly and he suckled, hard, at the space just over her median cubital vein.

“Mmmm…” Lifting away again he pulled her arms abruptly over her head and leaned over to look directly into her eyes. “I fucking love you, you infuriating woman. You know that?”

She did. And squirmed a little in confusion over it, as always. “I…” /Don’t deflect./ “Yeah. I do. And same goes. You irritating vampire.”

“Good.” And then he was heading south again, ignoring her mutters about jerks who couldn’t follow simple instructions to murmur things to her body. Clearly his conversation right now was reserved for parts of her that were not in her head, but at least he was returning to activities that made a great deal more sense to her. Worrying at her neck, moving toward her breasts, all the while saying things like, “Just feel,” and “Let me love you, Buffy. Just let me love you, let me make you feel…” Which made her tense briefly, because his mouth was doing things that were, to his usual standard, amazing, were lighting her body on fire; but his words, she realized belatedly, were dangerously close to ones that should freeze her, throw her back to another time, another night in another room, where she had been too hurt to make him listen, and he had been too damaged to hear; pushed beyond the limits of patience and love. 

His hands though, were, in juxtaposition, so unbelievably gentle in their urging as they slid along her sides, doing things she had never felt from him, that somehow the words… sounded like an entirely different vocabulary. It shifted her perceptions subtly, and for the first time she heard the words for what they were now. Not what they once had been—the demands of a demon in love who had been driven beyond the edges of his tenuous control—but promises of love while she fought to find her way beyond her own. 

This time it was she who feared to be pushed over her erstwhile limits. 

As he said the words again and again a memory assailed her; not of that awful moment in the bathroom… but of Spike looking up at her from the bottom of the stairs at her old house at Revello. Expecting nothing, hoping for nothing at all. Grateful just to be permitted back into her home, allowed within her sphere. Watching her, as always, with that expression of awed amazement and wonder that she had never once been able to acknowledge, then, because to do so would be to recognize that love, coming from him, was real. That he could feel it. 

That _he_ was real. _‘I know you’ll never love me. I know I’m a monster. But you treat me like a man, and that’s…’ _The sorrow in his eyes, the pain, and yet the fulfillment he had gotten just from her… god; treating him remotely decently, broke her heart now. And even more so when she realized, all too belatedly, that it was because of something as simple as _what he was_, something he could never change, that he thought she could never love him… when it was what he was that loved her with all he had ever been. 

“Christ, I love you, Buffy. Let me show you…”

And he was. He was; always had been, then and now. Spike—the person who had loved her family, watched her back, striven to love her to the best of his ability for years, and held her undamaged through every possible sex act despite all their differences—Spike was a _demon_. And he was a demon who loved her. But he had fought to be human, for her sake; to the point where he had opened up, sought help from the man he had once been. Set free, first in chains but ever more free-range, every day, the man he had been before his first death; the shackled human soul in bondage. Loosened his chains, ungagged him—if he had, in fact, ever been gagged—and begged him for guidance in how to pretend to be a mockery of a human lover, so that she might perhaps accept him. Until the day he had finally freed that man entirely and set him back in the driver’s seat of his being; set him before even the demon he had been for over a hundred years of his existence. Changed his entire identity. 

For her.

“‘…Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast…’ Oh, bloody hell, luv, look at you…” 

And so, yes. His demon had fought back, once or twice; roaring out, struggling against the duality of this unexpected body-sharing, this reordering of his being. Against the unwilling, unsatisfactory situation that he had created by loosing the man he had held in bondage for a hundred-plus years; seeking help but instead, by accident, turning himself into a shadow of the demon he had been. /Your soul was already half-free before you even left/ she thought, and arched up against his mouth. Clutched at his hair. /Wasn’t it, Spike?/

He had inadvertently placed himself in mutual, tandem yoke to a souled creature, out of the mere hope of reaching her. And it had not worked. No wonder that once in a while he had lashed out in rage at her incapacity to respond to his tentative overtures, his overwrought declarations of devotion. They were all he had had, when he had given up more than everything for her. 

“Christ, yes, Buffy, like that…”

Yes, once or twice he had snapped. And she had judged him for that, as if he were a human and lived according to human social mores, when all that had been but a veneer created for her benefit; drawn out from a past life and tendered to her with both hands held open in the hopes that she might, just maybe, take _all_ of him.

/You have to remember/ she admonished herself, running her hands up and down his smooth, sleek back, /Always remember—that you’re in a relationship with… _No_/ she corrected herself. /You’ve fallen in _love_ with a member of another _species_. There’s gonna be communication glitches. He’s gonna say ‘I love you’ in different ways./ Sometimes he did it with his body, sometimes with his mouth or his eyes… and sometimes in ways that had been utterly untranslatable to her.

Her body bucked up in inarticulate response when his fingers stroked down, brushed lightly against the bud of her anus; a quick, flirtatious tease while his mouth tantalized everywhere but her nipples; kissing under and beside her breasts and around her ribs and making her damn glad she had had what passed for a bath at Wolfram and Hart before she’d come back here, because how distracting would _that_ have been? Not that he had ever seemed to mind getting all up in her no matter how gross they had been after a fight. She could not count the number of times they’d gone at it sweaty, covered in slime and blood (or Doublemeat Palace stink, for that matter) and…

“That’s right, luv, just feel…” It came out softly, but with a low growl now rumbling under the words. Man and demon; both of them making love to her. Making her crazy. 

Some languages were, in fact, universal. Which was why he had always tried to default, with her, to sex.

/You didn’t have communication glitches the first time around because with Angel… it wasn’t the demon who loved you./ She hadn’t even remotely been in a relationship with Angelus, save when he had been doing his version of flirting with her; that sociopathic, slow, stalking that had ended in the emotional maiming and even the deaths of so many people she had loved. 

With Angel she had loved only the much-amended man buried beneath the onus of the demon’s deeds. But this time around it was the _demon_ who had loved her first, and the man who had bridged the gap for them, helped the demon to speak the language for her that allowed her to understand that that love was genuine, whether she had wanted to believe it or no.

So now, when she heard the words, murmur-growled against her heated flesh, “Let me love you; oh, _God_, Buffy, let me make you _feel_…” she didn’t freeze; and when the memories flirted at the edges of her vision…

She chose to trust.

Unfortunately, that was the moment in which he heard himself. And stopped dead. “Oh, Christ, Buffy, I…” His eyes, staring into hers, were full of panic. Of horror.

“Shh…” She pulled his head back down, shook her own, eyes warm on his. “I am. I’m busy feeling, right now. Don’t mess it up for me.” Dug her fingers deeply into his hair, messing it up the way she privately loved to do when they were in bed. Got it out of whatever remained of its disciplined, gelled state—he’d apparently found hair products somewhere in this hell, or ‘his girls’ had. They should have a talk about him and these ‘girls’ of his—and tugged his oh-so-talented mouth down to where her nipples waited, aching, for his touch. He’d teased her long enough.

He looked up at her along her body, undone for the moment and uncertain. “Buffy…”

“Please,” she whispered. “You’re killing me, here.”

“Sodding hell,” he muttered, and taking a stronger grip of her waist with his right hand, he wrapped the left around her unattended breast, fingers dampened already—God, he moved fast—and sank his mouth hungrily around her yearning nipple. 

She surged up to him with a cry as he went to work, mouth and hand working in concert, because, God, he always knew how to do this so amazingly well… She was shuddering already, everywhere; sometimes he got her off just from this, and she wasn’t ready, she wasn’t… “Please,” she whispered again. “Make me wait.”

“Oh,” he answered, satisfied again as he lifted away, and sent her a little smile. “I’ll attend to you Buffy. Don’t you worry.” And he was back at it; merciless and slow and cruel… and wonderful.

The thing about being with someone who knew your body so well was… They knew your body. What made it tick… and _how_ to make it tick. And exactly when. “Oh God…” He was, they both knew, capable of keeping her on edge for literally _hours; _the time with the handcuffs having been the singular memorable occasion. Singular because, of course, she had never permitted it again, once she had realized how much power he had over her; no matter the shuddering completion he’d brought her… because power had been by far the more important thing to her in those days even than blistering, mind-melting satisfaction. /Idiot./ 

Major idiot. Because when, in that one time, he had finally let her come, blistering barely covered it. Spurred by her furious, taunting verbal abuse, he had driven her violently over the edge, over and over again, a half-dozen times in the space of minutes, in a way that she probably wouldn’t have been able to handle at all if it hadn’t been for her Slayer constitution. He was exhausting, talented, brilliant, had pretty much ruined sex for her with anyone else…

Fuck, she had missed him.

He took his sweet time with her nipples, attending to each breast with what she now recognized as a tenderness that had been disguised under a mere mask of savagery in their previous assignations; because she had allowed him that latitude when it came to this part of her body. Allowed him to lose himself briefly in gentleness as long as he didn’t talk about it, didn’t let her know what he was thinking. Now, though, they had opened the floodgates of speech, and he was saying everything she had never permitted him to express before in some kind of eloquently sexual stream-of-consciousness. It was an awakening. “…Get your pert nipples ripe as cherries, won’t I, and then when I get there your sweet cunny will be so ready for me, won’t she, she’ll be dying for me, she’ll let me do whatever I want. …Love how you let me be soft with you here, Buffy, love how then you let me take my time buried in your quim for ages and it never has to end; Christ… never want it to end…”

God, he’d always wanted to make it last, make love to her for hours… and she’d always wanted the quick heat, the thunderous mating so she could have it done and leave him. Had always taken advantage of his preferences, pushed him down, let him get her off quick and dirty and then shoved him away before she could ever think about letting him get too close to loving her for anything other than the mechanics of need. Had done her best to make sure he didn’t even get to fully enjoy the thing he loved the most; when he was face down between her legs and losing himself… As if any woman shouldn’t be grateful as hell to have a guy who _wanted_ to be there, like he always was; first, last, forever. 

God, what the hell was _wrong_ with her before? 

She would for sure let him take his time now. She would let him enjoy whatever he wanted of her. She would…

His questing fingers brushed, incredibly lightly, against her clit, and she lost all ability to wait. Forgot about considerations like sponge-baths and what state of depilation she might currently enjoy. Bucked hard against him, seeking greater pressure; but he was already gone like a damn ghost. Asshole. “You’re going to kill me,” she whispered to him, arching up repeatedly, and as uselessly as a moth at a lamp, against his hovering form. “Spike!” It had been _years _since she’d had his mouth.

_Years_.

“Got plenty of time, Slayer,” he informed, her, and moved up to scrape a nipple lightly with his teeth. “Gonna make you so ready for me…”

/Dammit!/ She caught his ass with both hands, dug her nails in. Pressed up fervently. “You’ve done that already. Can you take your time down _here?_ For God’s sake!” /Do you know how many times I’ve _dreamed_ about you? Woke myself up thinking it was you and it was just me and wanted to cry myself back to sleep, and now you’re…/

He lifted up to grin at her, mouth reddened and looking way too pleased with himself. “Always so bloody impatient. Can’t give a bloke a little time to work his way around a bird.” Curling his tongue smugly around his teeth, he brushed her clit again, because he was a complete bastard, and watched her rock helplessly against nothing but air. 

Goddamn zephyr. “You’re evil!”

“Yeah. Where’ve you been?”

“I’m going to murder you after this,” she promised grimly, and had to hold back the urge to unload a stress-reducing punch at his smug-ass face when he just smirked, undaunted, and lowered his head back down to torture her with kisses down her fluttering belly.

Well, she supposed that was, at least, progress. 

Though, he was still taking his sweet damn time. He seemed to be tracing every stupid muscle in her stomach, his fingers following along behind to tickle every rib, to run down her heaving sides; and then he had her legs up over his shoulders—oh thank god!—and every part of her that lived between her thighs was swollen and begging for his touch. 

Except of course he had to take a page out of her book and veer to the left, to sink his lips into the curve between thigh and flank; tickle with his tongue, suck, and he had too firm a grip on her leg for her to kick him in the head, so all she could do was fumble for a pillow and maybe try to throw it at him. Except he of course evaded it easily, still grinning, went right back to what he was doing, the bastard, and he was literally going to kill her.

Call her spoiled, but she had _never_ had to wait this long for him to go down on her. That was usually his first damn stop! It was like his favorite thing to do, what the hell _was_ this?

His head was up again, cool breath in passing sliding over her now-desperate clit to make her tremble. “Turnabout’s fair play, pet.”

/Oh. Shit./

His head was already back down… this time on the other side, to play with the curve inside her other thigh, and she was out of pillows to throw at him.

She fought to free a leg, now desperate to fight back, kick him, knock him over, get him inside of her; something! But he had her in a steady grip, hands locked determinedly over her ankles so that she could only free herself if she actually wanted to hurt him. 

And Buffy had a new rule. No hurting Spike in bed. No more of that. No more hurting Spike at all, ever. Not unless they were sparring… which she did kind of hope was a thing that would happen again someday, because she had never gotten as much enjoyment out of fighting anyone as she had with him. He had ever been her match; with the rough and tumble… and with the rough and tumble. 

But if she couldn’t kick him in the head to get out of this, that meant… She had to endure. 

Damn him.

He was kissing his way up along her thigh now, ignoring her jerking attempts at freedom, and oh hell no! It dawned on her, only now, that he was actually retracing her course, the cruel bastard. Down her leg, a kiss to the inside of her knee; but his eyes, as he did so, were full of wonder that she was allowing him so much room to touch her. To explore.

It was at great expense, she had to admit. She was a quivering mess. 

It slowed her growing problem only a little, worrying about the light dusting of hair on her legs; but only for a moment, since it didn’t slow _him_ down at all. Which meant that she was back up to speed before he’d gotten to her left ankle, and had completely forgotten about such blindingly unimportant considerations by the time he had kissed the arch of her left foot. Eventually he started back up the other side, at which point she was at least ninety percent sure she was going to disintegrate before he made it back to where she needed him. “Spike,” she whispered; horrified to hear the pleading note in her own voice and yet still fairly certain nothing would shake him from his determined path. 

“Not long now, luv,” he told her softly, and continued kissing his way lovingly up along her right thigh, interspersed with little, sucking bites, and oh, god… he was right over her pulse there, he was so close, she could feel him almost humming along with her speedy heartbeat…

“Christ, your heart sounds like music when you’re here, luv,” he murmured, and slid up to pause, just breathing as he hovered over her now desperately needy pussy. She was throbbing, had never been so wet for him, achingly empty, practically clenching; just the air of his breath hurt as he drew in long lungfuls of her scent and exhaled over her. “And this. Bloody hell. The best perfume in the universe, right here… In any dimension…”

She couldn’t handle it anymore. Reached down and seized a sizable handful of his hair. “I am going to _stake_ you if you do not fix this right now.”

He slipped his hands up, apparently wholly unconcerned with her threat or the status of his near-depilation. Slid his palms under her ass, his thumbs into the hollows of her thighs. “You do that, pet, and I won’t be able to do this.” And he lowered his head—God, _finally_—to nuzzle at her clit.

She bucked up against him, already half-mindless with need. “God, Spike, please, just…”

“Not yet.” Pressing down firmly, he shifted his grip and bore her down onto the bed. Totally ignored her disappointed noises—she could fight back, push up against him, but she couldn’t force him to use that incredible tongue on her, so she had to play nice if she wanted—was that _her_ making that sound?

And then he was spreading her open. Settling back so that she had to sit up a little in shocked dismay, because, _No!_ And there he was, face damp and eyes bright with some indefinable emotion that looked like wonder and joy, and… And the smug, tongue-curling, devil-may-care demon was gone, replaced with awe. “Christ, Buffy, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Like a hothouse orchid in a lord’s garden; special-bred, exotic, one-of-a-kind. Petals and texture and scent just made to order for one man… and that man is me. ‘Cept I’m no soddin’ lord, and someone’s surely botched the bloody paperwork…”

Sometimes she had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but she knew one thing. Spike was just as much of a poet as William had ever been. Too much of his poetry had been about killing and the chaos and glee of battle, because she had truncated his ability to speak of love. At least to her, anyway. But if she but _allowed_ him to make love, he could do it just as well with his words as with the poetry of his body. 

It was kind of embarrassing, actually, to know that he thought of her that way. But… she couldn’t take this away from him. Not if she wanted to know all of him. 

She was still dying, though. “Spike,” she whispered, arching up. 

“Sorry, pet,” he grinned… and buried his face back in her folds. And went to work.

His tongue was an incredible work of mobile art; inexhaustible, creative, effortlessly capable, and unerring at finding every place on her that could not stand just… another…

/_No!_/

“Not yet.”

She flung her head back and forth, pounded on the bed. Heard something tear. Thought she heard him laugh in glee, the asshole, as he slipped from one spot, one rhythm, back to the other—yes!—and then, maddeningly, away again, the fucking _bastard!  
_  
She was going to kill him, she was going to literally murder… She was making embarrassingly inarticulate noises, could hear him making some kind of fascinating, animalistic ones from somewhere in the far distance… And then his blunt nails dug, hard, into the junction of her thighs and buttocks, and he surged in fiercely against her, bearing down abruptly against _the spot_, and, ohgodohgodohgod…

_“Now,_ Slayer.”

Somehow, as she surged up to meet him, she could tell that he had slipped a little away, his face turned just a hair so that his mouth was now at an oblique angle to her; only his tongue working her and his lips a little further away; knew from some deeply instinctive place in her gut, as he slipped two fingers inside her, folded them in the come-hither gesture that always made it _so damn good_, that he had moved away to avoid nicking her with his fangs because he had lost control, his half-starved demon was out…

She wanted him to. She didn’t even feel an ounce of shame about it anymore. “Now,” she managed to pant it out, as she ground down on his fingers, and the lights flickered behind her eyes. “Do it. Please.” Heard his startled moan, felt, almost as if it were happening from some attenuated place on some distant zone of her body, the slicing burn at her thigh where she quivered on his fingers like a worm on a hook… And then he was matching the pulsing in her clit and inside her, the pulling of his mouth and the thrusting of his hand, the tapping of his thumb; and it was all the same, and she thought she was convulsing, had her legs clamped so tight around his neck and shoulder and arm that he could no longer move and it would have _killed_ anyone who actually needed to breathe to live… And she couldn’t hear the sounds she was making, but she knew it had never been like… 

The world whirled. Time and space shrank to a dark point, all clenching and pulsing, and the sucking pull… 

And then blackout.

***

Alright, we'll leave it at that till next week's smut-with-conversational-breaks, heh.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, onward with the smut-with-conversational breaks! (In which we begin to explore some more demon politics at Spike's domicile; an ongoing theme as Buffy slots herself into this brave new world.) 
> 
> Please note; Buffy is incognito here for a while, while she susses out her place in the vast scheme of things, because she is an eminently practical creature. Please remember that, as we all know, she is who she is, and who she is will naturally surface and make itself known to all and sundry without any real question as time goes by in Hell.
> 
> **General Author's Note:** I despise the term 'gypsy'. I hated typing it just now. It is a racial slur, and I flat refuse to use it in my stories. I am only using it now to state that it will never show up in my fic. That that is one of my few major beefs with these shows, that that word is flung about so carelessly coupled with so many stereotypes, because it is a slur that is still dangerous today, because people are being abused with and for it, forcibly sterilized; the crimes can be listed endlessly. People were gassed for it. So... You'll see the proper noun 'Romany' below when Spike talks about Angelus' past. And I will not use any other word for those wronged folk in any iteration of that backstory. 
> 
> /educational rant.

She came back to the low, russet light shining through sealed eyelids; to the feeling of his lips on her throat. Darkness fell briefly as he ran little kisses over her closed eyes. “Didn’t take enough to knock you out, pet. Wasn’t that desperate. You’re gonna give me a complex.”

She smiled lazily and lifted an arm to drape it blindly over his neck. “Mmmmm…” she managed, and hoped the syllable conveyed enough meaning to relieve his concerns.

“Oh. Yeah?” She felt his weight shift beside her and deducted he had settled down on his elbow to survey her with interest. “Well, now you’re going to puff up my ego, luv.”

She made a halfhearted moue and flung out an arm to fumble at the nightstand, wondering vaguely if she could reach the flask she was sure she had seen over there somewhere when she had first surveyed the room. It wouldn’t be water, but she’d only take a sip. It’d be better than nothing.

A hand caught hers, held it tightly. “Nu-uh, pet. You need real sustenance after that bit of rough and tumble.” She felt him shift again, sit up. Heard a bell ring. 

“Did you just ring for the butler?” she managed, though it felt like lifting weights to move her mouth.

“One of the girls is always hanging about. I’ll ask ‘em to bring you something to eat; get you a nip to drink. Seeing as you already saw to me.”

With massive effort she propped open one eye to pin him with a glare. “Do we need to talk about this gaggle of demon-girls you seem to have at your beck and call?”

His scarred brow went up, and he smirked at her. “Oh, yeah? You jealous?”

She let the eye fall closed, feeling mildly disgruntled… or rather, feeling as much disgruntlement as she could muster considering her current state of bonelessness. “Depends.”

The bed shifted, and then he was slithering over to lay on top of her again; a nice contrast to her overheated flesh. Cool-ish air wafted over her body as he shifted the sheets aside to get them out of the way… and then he was rubbing his apparently permanently-hard cock along her still-sensitive clit, sending sparks of half-uncomfortable, half-needy stimulation into the center of her belly. “The goods are all yours.”

She squirmed against him, abruptly achingly empty once more. “Dammit, Spike… I’m still jelly.”

“Bet I could wake you up…”

Her body was perking to consciousness in spite of herself. Without consulting her brain in the slightest her right leg had already slid up to rub along his hip… and, oh hell. She flung it over his taut ass, pulling him in close. “Damn you.”

He arched up, leaned over on his supporting hand. She shifted to accommodate him as he caught hold of himself, held her breath… and let it out on a low moan when he slipped into her. 

“Sodding hell, Buffy, you’re so bleeding wet for me…”

“Whose… Oh God!” She surged up, pulled hard with her heel to the cleft of his ass, fighting to drag him in deeper. “Whose fault is that?”

His forehead dropped to hers, and they spent a moment just moving. Her mouth was open, and she reflected that she while she was, yes, very thirsty and certainly more than a little hungry, god, she could do this all day. Just move with him, on the shining edge of perfection, feel him sliding in and out of her like some inexhaustible source of renewable energy…

“You needed something, Boss… Oh.”

Buffy froze. Spike didn’t, really. Just flexed, turning only the upper half of his body, while the lower drove deeper into her, his hips pinning her flat (which, just, _god)._ It was a move she recognized from when she had been invisible and Xander had walked in… only this time she wasn’t quite the exhibitionist she had been when no one could see her. /Damn, damn, damn…/ She had completely forgotten the fact that he had called for someone to come and bring her something. 

“Who is _that?”_

“Never you mind,” Spike answered the inquiring—and jealous-sounding?—voice with total aplomb, considering he was in mid-naked-tango. “I need you to run out and get her something. Water, some food what’s good for humans, yeah?” 

Instead of taking orders and leaving them to it, this girl, whoever she was, decided to take this incredibly bad time to start an interrogation. “Why are you with a _human?_ Is she one of the refugees?” 

Spike was clearly losing his patience, judging by the abrupt frayed note in his voice. “Just get the water, will you, and the food? There’s a good girl.”

A short silence, pregnant with some sort of heavy emotional weight Buffy couldn’t read, then, “She’s not… the one you said owned you, is she?”

/He said I what, now?/ Intrigued almost enough at this point for it to overcome her seriously dented modesty, Buffy found herself struggling between the impulse to shove Spike out of the way to have a look at the girl who was so inordinately interested in her and the urge to remain where she was, mostly invisible behind his looming body. 

Curiosity won out in the end—because, propriety be damned, that note of surging jealousy in the girl’s voice was just the limit, really—and she lifted up a little to peep just a hair around Spike’s naked shoulder. Caught a glimpse of a short, perky brunette with a mop of shoulder-length, curly hair and a seriously put out expression painted across her face. She looked human enough, Buffy supposed, though there was something… a little off about her back. 

Spike sighed and tilted a little further away, though this did negative things to their, ah, intimate connection, eyes flickering to meet Buffy’s briefly. “She is. I’d be obliged if you’d consider her the lady of the house from here on out.”

The brunette looked aghast. “The Azure Queen is the lady of the house,” she pointed out. No doubt she was talking about Illyria. Of course, being a demon girl, she’d all but worship one of those Old Ones or whatever Illyria was. With her around, Spike was going have an uphill battle if he was going to try to get these demon chicks of his to treat Buffy like she was anything but lowly human chattel. He would probably have had a rough time with that even _without_ the weird blue woman around, in a dimension like this. His inborn respect for her came from having spent years going toe-to-toe with the Slayer. They knew nothing of such matters in this dimension. As far as the locals knew she was just another piece of human flotsam adrift in whatever hellstorm had brought them all to this shithole they called home. 

Accordingly… “I’m not your human concubine?” she asked Spike with a faint smile.

“Buffy,” he hissed warningly, and turned back to his little demon servant. “Wherever Illyria is in the palace, she’s the queen, yeah. But in my part of the house, Buffy’s it. You got it?”

“Whatever you say, Boss,” the girl answered. “All bloody hail.” Still, she clearly found this an onerous demand. 

“Now do us a favor and run and get the water and that lot; or have someone else do it if you’re busy, yeah? My girl needs feeding up.”

Demon chick looked irritated as hell, but she nodded once, sharply, and turned to leave. 

“Thank you, Maria.”

The name hit Buffy like a bolt of lightning. She was moving before she knew it; uncoupling them almost as an afterthought as she struggled out of Spike’s grip and fully intent on leaving the bed to go after the chick. She would have words with the little bitch, right now. She would…

She was arrested by Spike’s hand on her shoulder… and by the sight of what looked like spider’s legs peeping out of the funny hump on the girl’s back as she exited the room, the door thumping closed behind her. 

That was… not right.

“Don’t,” Spike was saying from somewhere half over her head and partly behind her. “Buffy…”

“What the hell was that on her back?”

He sighed heavily. “They call her ‘Spider’. Gave me the hell of a turn when they popped out all at once down where they used to keep the dungeon bit of the place.”

Buffy tore her gaze away from the now-closed door to stare at him in shock. “They… She…”

“Made it a bit tough to get away, yeah? She had ten arms and I had none.”

Buffy made to move again, hand on his shoulder to shove him away. He stilled her with a single word. “Please.”

Her eyes jerked back to his, demanding. “Why? When she…”

“I told you why.” It was spoken quietly… but with a hard, firm edge that demanded attention. 

Spike very seldom drew a hard line with her. Almost never. When he did… it was incumbent on her to listen. _Really_ listen, because usually it was a matter of supreme importance; possibly a matter of survival, certainly a matter he held very near and dear to his heart. Once upon a time she might have stomped all over the latter consideration… but not now. She had never, ever discounted the former. She had always taken him seriously, both as a combatant, and later as a knowledgeable comrade-in-arms.

It was harder than she had thought it would be, however, to clamp down on the raging tide of emotions; even though she knew he was entirely justified in asking this of her. She wanted to rip that girl’s head off and feed it to her. To do, as Illyria had put it that night back behind the Hyperion, more violence. To take the vengeance that Spike would not take for himself. But…

He didn’t want her to. And, if she had to think of why… 

He was a leader now. Trapped between two necessities, forced to be a diplomat. His power depended on the buy-in of the court he had somehow taken over from the previous tenant of this place; the one who had originally captured him (and someday really soon she was totally going to need to get the full story of how he’d managed to go from ‘guy in dungeon’ to ‘new co-demon lord’). She knew all about putting aside the personal need for vengeance in order to satisfy the mission, knew Spike knew that lesson very well too, or he would have killed Robin Wood. 

More importantly, Spike was a leader in a _demon_ dimension. And, she realized now, that meant being a _demon_ lord; willing, to a certain extent, to uphold demon law, at least in public. No doubt he had to walk a pretty fine line between two worlds, if he was to keep his precarious throne so that he could protect the humans he was quietly shuffling off to safehouses. And he had already said that according to demon standards, what this girl had done to him wasn’t anything wrong. Which was just ridiculous, and what was even _wrong_ with demons, but…

And then there was the personal level. Because if Maria had to die, then why should she, Buffy, get off so easily when she had done the same? “I’m sorry. I just…”

His fingers slid under her chin, lifting her head. And he smiled sadly into her eyes. “I understand, you know. You think I don’t want to dust my git of a grandsire for what he did to you? But you’d hate me if I did.”

She blinked, nonplussed. “What Angel… I don’t… What?”

Spike sighed and shook his head. “Never mind, pet. It was a long time ago. Another life, yeah? Just sayin’… I get it. But I don’t and I won’t. Because that’s up to you. And Maria’s up to me. Alright?”

Buffy was utterly sidetracked. “You mean because of the blood-bond thing? Because he didn’t tell me? Let it go on for however long, and…”

“Oh, sodding hell. No, Buffy.” Spike looked abruptly at the end of his tether with her. “Because of what he did with you when you were barely out of Pampers, for Chrissakes. Followed you about, didn’t he, all dark and mysterious; made you think you needed him, had to know what he was about. Showed up in your room, no doubt, and made loads of protests about how he shouldn’t be with you, how it couldn’t be, then let himself go right on and snog you anyway, yeah?”

She was stung. “We were in love!” He was twisting it all up… 

Spike’s expression was hard, though, and uncompromising. “Love, is it? Made you promise you wouldn’t stop loving him before he told you what he was, didn’t he, I’ll warrant?”

Buffy jerked, stunned at the way he’d framed the not-quite-question. “It wasn’t like that! There was… a lot going on. And he…”

“Followed you around, didn’t he? Followed you all the way from LA, Dru told me. She said he was on your trail from the time you were fifteen.” He leaned back a little, carefully removing himself from her orbit to watch her with that shrewd gaze she sometimes hated; the one he used when he was putting things into a perspective for her that she did not want to face in the slightest. “Just a tot, Buffy; not even old enough to truly understand what he was thinking. At that age you wouldn’t even let Dawn drink coffee or do research, and he was lookin’ at you like his next meal…”

She jerked away from him completely, feeling violated by the comparison. She couldn’t think of herself, ever, as having been as young as Dawn had been only last year or the year before, or—god—the year before _that_, when she and Angel had been… “It wasn’t _like_ that,” she insisted again, and fought the tide of grossness the comparison foisted on her. “He wanted to _help_ me. He just… We fell in love, and then things…”

Spike shook his head grimly. “He always had an eye for the sweet, young, untouched virgins. They were his favorites, because they didn’t know enough yet to know what he was on about. He could manipulate them into thinking anything he liked, and then once he’d had his way with ‘em he could drop ‘em cold. Why do you think he did what he did to Dru? Or the Romany girl he did so young; their most precious virgin? Earned him his curse, yeah?” He tilted his head toward her, eyes glittering in a way that felt distinctly uncomfortable. “When did he leave, Buffy? Was it when you started to be capable? Grown up enough to handle things on your own?” Each quiet, cynical phrase was like a hammer blow. “Did you still need him? _Really_ need him? And when you visited him, or he visited you… did he seem the same with you? As hot for you as he used to be?”

She closed her eyes, her breath strangling in her throat as the memories assaulted her in spite of her resistance. “_I don’t get you.”_

_“No you don’t. Not anymore.”_

/Oh God…/

_“You let me worry about the needy.”_

And it had been so easy for him to hold off. She had thought it had been because he had had so much practice, but what if…

And then there was that unusually uncomfortable meeting in between cities after she had come back from the dead; one that she had started to suspect in the interim had been instigated by Willow just to get her to show some ‘human emotion’.

_“Why didn't you tell me you were alive, Buffy?” _Like she needed to feel guilty for more stuff, when she had had so damn much going on that she had barely been able to keep her head afloat. Why hadn’t _Willow_ told him? She had been the official Sunnydale-LA go-between, hadn’t she?

And he had acted so weird. Almost angry about it for the rest of the meeting, till she had finally demanded, _“Why are you being so standoffish? I drove all the way here, and you know how I hate driving. I have so much going on back in Sunnydale; I could’ve used…”_

_“I need to understand. Needed to see you. To be close enough to make sure that… That I could still feel… what I did before. When you died… it was almost like… I was numb. Like I didn’t feel anything.”_

_“Wow. That… warms a girl’s heart.”_

_“I didn’t mean… I think there’s something wrong. With me. You were the love of my life. I thought maybe there was something about how you died that… maybe messed up…”_

That pause now made sense. /Messed up the blood-bond, you meant./

The rest still didn’t make sense, though. Because Angel was still trying. Trying to get her to choose him, trying to…

“He doesn’t like losing to his own childer,” Spike interrupted her thoughts quietly. “Especially me, because he still thinks of me as a pale imitation of him. And now he’s jealous, because he’s afraid I’m doin’ the soul thing better than he ever did. Even though he tells himself it’s because I don’t deserve you; because I’m not ashamed enough of my time with the bloody Whirlwind.” He shook his head grimly, flipped an arm so that his hand jerked, casting the past away. “But the truth is, he made me into what I was, and he knows it. He deserves all the guilt he carries, yeah? He never bothered to know the real me. And you do.” He leaned forward then, forearms on his knees, facing her square. “He can’t stand that, luv. If it weren’t for us, he’d have let you go a long time ago, because he needs to be needed. And you haven’t needed him for years.” And his eyes hardened into dark, glittering sapphires. “You’ve outgrown him, Buffy.”

She closed her eyes. Looked away. She just couldn’t… “I can’t talk about this right now.”

The silence dragged on between them, uncomfortable and tense. Spike, of course, was the first to break it, because he was always the best of the two of them at trying to make peace. “I’m sorry, pet. I’ve kept my mouth shut for this long and I should’ve kept it shut longer. He’s a right tosser, but I know better than to say word one about the prat in front of you.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head, unable to formulate a reply. “I guess I just didn’t realize till now how much of you hating him had to do with… me. Not… jealousy or… stuff from your past with… Angelus, but… Trying to protect me. Because back when you were with Drusilla, you always seemed…” She waved her hand vaguely. “Just, whatever. Like you didn’t care. And you said you thought Angel and I would never be friends. That we’d always love each other…”

“I said,” he corrected so grimly that it drew her eyes up in spite of herself to stare at him, “that you’d fight and you’d shag—though I forgot there were extenuating circumstances about that last bit, didn’t I—but I was right about that never be friends bit, yeah? Have you been able to come ‘round to being friends, really?”

In a way, he was right. And how twisted was that, that the man who had at the time hated them both had seen into them, seen their future so damn clearly. And yet. “You also said that we’d hate each other till it made us…” She frowned, but couldn’t quite dredge up the overwrought memory. “Shake, or something, and I can’t imagine actually hating him.”

“Well,” Spike answered flatly, and reached out to grab a cigarette from the nightstand where they’d been hiding behind the flask. Yanked his battered silver Zippo out of the pack with swift economy of movement, but also with a sort of hard jerk at the end that bespoke fierce emotion kept carefully in check. “I also said you’ll be in love till it kills you both. Here’s hoping I was wrong about that one, too, and in the end the best you’ll both manage is a lukewarm sort of nodding acquaintance in honor of the past.” He held the cigarette for a moment as if he was seriously considering lighting up right there in bed, entire body tense. Glanced at the closet window, all captain jittery. “God knows love and hate are both about passion. If you can’t manage to hate him…”

Buffy reached out, covered his hand, cigarette and all, to calm him. “I’m really not sure how I feel about him at all anymore,” she admitted; more to herself than to Spike. “A few years ago I couldn’t imagine anything else. I used to think everything would stay as passionate as it was then… but I’m not sixteen anymore, and everything’s changed so much. _I’ve_ changed so much that loving him just seems like… too much work, sometimes. So much drama…” She heard the hissing intake of breath from Spike, the sudden, long absence of respiration that said she had somehow hurt him, completely inexplicably with her words. /What now?/ 

It hit her after a long moment’s consideration. /Oh./ “That kind of drama; the kind that feels like dying all the time?” She lifted her eyes to meet his now-hard blue ones, and sighed heavily. “None of that felt like life. Like it made me… stronger, you know? Like it fed me. It just made me tired. Distracted me, even, sometimes. And…” She looked away from his softening gaze, shaking her head in regret she hadn’t realized she felt till precisely that instant. “The core of trust that we had under it all? That steady thing I always insisted was the key, the reason you and I couldn’t be?” Another tightening from the still-breathless man sharing the bed with her. “He and I don’t have that anymore. Not after I found out about you; and not after he kept me at Wolfram and Hart, and lied about why he was keeping me there. So I just don’t know.” 

He still wasn’t breathing; a sure sign he had nothing to say, or was afraid to say anything. A vampire didn’t need to breath unless it was to speak. The air in their lungs went nowhere sans a beating heart, the oxygen exhaled in the exact same state as it had entered; unless they were smoking, of course. It was just dead motion; a reflex. Enough to pass over vocal cords and, apparently, send nicotine to the brain. 

And to communicate, if doing so didn’t end up causing more pain than the effort was worth. 

She dropped her hand from his then and reached out, needing on some deep level to heal the gulf that had sprung up between them. Laid her palm tentatively on his knee, where he sat a foot and a half and miles away. “But you. Us. I never would have thought, a couple of years ago, that I would ever say this, but the trust we’ve built between us? I’d put that up against what I had with Angel any day. And I know you said…” She bit her lip, skirting around her memories of that one, awful night she would prefer not to recall. Saw him wince, knew he remembered too. What he’d said about trust, as if it canceled out all the burning and consuming they’d managed to do over the years. Till she’d literally burnt him to dust.

And yet he was still here; keeping his promise, refusing to leave her. “But I’m glad we have this too. Because we also have the passion. I mean, obviously I’ve hated you…” A faint smile twitched at her lips in spite of herself. “Or at least you’ve definitely driven me nuts, to the point where I couldn’t stop thinking about why it was that I couldn’t stop thinking about you. So if obsessing about someone counts as passion…”

He was breathing again. “Buffy…”

She pinned him with her gaze. “And I can’t imagine not loving you now, since it almost killed me, not having you with me. I don’t think I was really alive until I found you again…”

He flinched and looked away, guilt coating his features. 

“And I know it almost killed you to stay away, because you’re an idiot. Trying to kill yourself because you’re dumb enough to think I’d want that…” She could still, honestly, slap the shit out of him for that, knew he was aware of how hard she was fighting not to do it by the way her muscles vibrated against his leg, her skin humming with the intense need to take some action.

The guilty expression intensified, and she twitched her fingers on his knee to bring his attention back. “I know… we’ll fight again…” It was kind of a given, considering how she felt just _talking_ about the dumb shit he could do sometimes. And knowing how easy it was for her to say things that wrecked his soul, god knew…

His eyes snapped back to hers and he snorted sarcastically in acknowledgment. They were both wholeheartedly aware that they still had many fights on their horizon, if only because their communication was sometimes just completely nonexistent. At least… it was whenever they ventured outside of the physical.

Physically, whether it was fighting or fucking, they had always gotten along like gangbusters. And she only now realized… he could have been talking about them, not her and Angel, that night so long ago in the basement of what would become the Magic Box. If they had only known, had only been able to see the future…

/Except that, we’ve also managed to be friends, too, in there./ 

It was a strange world. “And I know that when you touch me… It’s impossible that there will ever be a time when you touch me that it doesn’t set me on fire.” 

That about did it. His eyes on hers were wide and bright now, his pupils dilated dark and sparking. “Sodding hell, Buffy.”

“That part isn’t brains,” she told him, and met that wondering, azure gaze squarely. “Coming to you when the Scourge was at my back and I should have been headed to Scotland… That wasn’t brains.” He flinched again, but she forestalled whatever he had been about to say with another firm squeeze to his knee. It was past; whatever had happened there, in those places. They were here, now, in this one. “It was blood. Blood screaming inside me to work its will.” She managed a little smile and hoped that throwing those words back at him would have the desired effect. That he would hear what she was trying to tell him. Given her own usual state of ‘Buffy trying to talk equals bad’, using her eloquent vampire against himself had been working for her so far. “And I have no problem anymore admitting it.” 

“Oh, Christ pet…” And then he was up against her, the unused cigarette cast aside into the nearest candelabra. His arms were around her, and his face was in her neck, buried against her bite scar. _His_ bite scar. “Buffy, Buffy…”

She knew what to do then. Moved up to return to her previous position in his lap, caught his half-stiffy in her hand (it had probably deflated somewhat during that whole conversation about Angel, and she supposed she couldn’t blame him for that). Focused on his eyes when, with a startled inhale, his snapped up to meet hers. Nudged his mouth open with a little butt of her lips against his. “Come here,” she whispered.

That was all it took. About one-quarter of a handjob, the faintest hint of a kiss, and he was there; ready and waiting. Because he belonged to her, as surely as his bite had made her his. 

She slipped onto him, shuddering a little, because, _god; _settled down with slow, even precision that made the low groan catch in his throat. He was watching her, once more, with awe, as she slid both arms back around his neck; as she arranged her legs around his and dropped her mouth back to attend to the suspended business of the kissing.

She could honestly make out with Spike for a year and be okay with it. She had learned that _really_ early on.

They settled into an excruciatingly slow rhythm, his slick, recently-painted nails digging into her lower back and releasing, over and over again in time with the carefully-spaced squeezing of internal muscles that had always rendered him mute and writhing with pain-pleasure. Riley had never liked it much; hadn’t been able to handle it at all after his monster-making meds had worn off. Sometimes she had even crushed his fingers a little when they’d tried that instead, later… and by the time she had gotten around to sex with Spike she’d had a serious inhibition about her internal musculature, about her orgasms; all of it. An inhibition that had lasted exactly five seconds, since his reaction to her first unstoppable, uncaring orgasm with him, in the bowels of that wrecked house, had actually sufficed only to make him come harder, groaning her name and saying half-sensible things about how fucking amazing she was. Begging for ‘more, again, Christ, more’ in a way that had instantly rebuilt her confidence, made her want him again and again and again despite everything that told her this was a mistake, this was wrong, this was…

She had needed so badly to just get off without worrying, without thinking; had needed just to _feel_. And he had _loved_ it, what she could do. What she did do, needed to do; growled and howled his encouragement to her with every thrust, every orgasm; through the second time, the fourth, the…

That, at first, had been what had kept her coming back, as much as anything, and despite her shame and self-disgust. Because she clearly needed a little monster in her man just to have sex at all. And, now…

Now, she welcomed it. Welcomed every moan, treasured every, “Christfuck, Slayer, do it to me harder, bleeding yeah, oh, hell…” Loved the way he spasmed against her, fell back against the hidden headboard between strokes, thrusting up with everything he had, his face flickering with pain-pleasure and on the edge of sliding into game-face with every clash between them, every consciously-calculated clench of her muscles on his needy cock. 

He was whispering things now, the low growl dominating; the one that said he was losing himself. She loved it when he did this; was always torn between leaning back to take her own pleasure and just… watching him. She even knew why, now that she could admit she loved it.

Because this? This was Spike’s poetry. 

To judge from the one she had heard in the bar, William had whispered of love in his poems; shy and sweet and hopeless. Spike roared his sentiments in tones that bespoke fire, and violence, and sex… But it was poetry all the same. And both parts of her man shared an equal belief in their incapacity to inspire love in return that made her heart clench. 

“Buffy, your quim is like fallen angels weeping tears of fire; Christ, you hold me safe as houses; you’re going to wreck me, destroy me, bloody burn me alive. Burn me, oh hell; beat me down, sodding take me and make me your bitch, Christ, I’m yours; whatever you need from me…” It was poetry, still, if too long banished by her inability to accept this love. She had turned a verbose vampire’s prose to blood, and fire, curses… and finally silence. But now…

“Christ, I love you.” His left hand, rising to cup her cheek, brush errant hair away from her face, eyes cleared for a moment. His fingers slipped into her mouth. She took them in, sucked them hard, watching him as he groaned again. “Lean back, luv. Take your pleasure. Take everything you need from me. I’ve got you.” His right hand, at the small of her back, steady as a rock now as she took him at his word and leaned back on her hands; god, she needed to, if he was going to…

And then his fingers were on her clit, doing what he knew so well to do, and he was murmuring words of love, now. “So bloody beautiful, your perky tits like golden domes erected to the sun in some exotic foreign land. And you let me worship there, in the temple of your body; sodding Christ, a bloke’s lucky to be permitted even to prostrate himself at the… Oh hell; the bleedin’ gates of you. To watch you break like waters over clear stones under the sun; you’re my golden goddess, Buffy...” On and on, and now he could also show his softer side. William’s influence on an already passionate demon… and she couldn’t stop. Now she was the one jerking spasmodically on him, unable to keep the pace while he did… /Oh _God_/ _That_, with his fingers, and found her deep, again and again, unraveling the ache of his loss once more. 

“Just like that, luv; come for me, come all over me and let me feel you. Crush me, bring me off like a bloody fountain; Christ, you’re the One, Buffy, you’re the only one…”

She had gotten two men who loved her for the price of one. One who loved ferociously and one who loved gently, but both generous and passionate… and both wholly hers.

And oh my _god_, they were _good_ in bed. 

She came with a triumphant shout that she did not bother to quell, clenching hard on him. Heard him growl-groan as he pulled her down hard; his fingers, the damp and the dry, crushing in their turn on her hips to yank her close as he folded up, buried his abruptly-demon-y face in her neck, and lost himself in her.

When the scratching knock came at the door, some uncounted time later, she realized only in that moment that she was literally dying of thirst, and her stomach was going to eat itself, and oh my god, was that food? /Please say they found water? Real water? And, like, maybe a burrito or a quiche or something?/ She had no idea what was available in this ‘palace’ of Spike’s for the humanfolk, but she had been living on vending machine junk food interspersed with some kind of gross Wolfram and Hart emergency rations they’d had stored away according to some kind of earthquake code. They had been large with the protein bars and stuff. Which, while they worked, had gotten super old real fast, with the chalky and dull. 

She wanted actual _food_ like woah.

Spike shot her a quick glance; a check-in that asked in not-so-many words was she ready for company, accompanied by an amused glance in the general direction of her now volubly-loud belly. 

With a put-upon sigh for the vagaries of her human constitution—stupid interrupt-y stomach—she rolled reluctantly off of him—his cock slid out of her, making them both grunt in protest—and scrunched down beside him on the bed to pull up the now thoroughly-rumpled, dampened sheet. 

He smirked at her in that smug way that said she looked like she’d been really just laid so hard it wasn’t even funny, then turned his attention back to the door, sheet only barely half-covering his goodies and the rest of him displayed like some kind of prize against the headboard. Showoff. He knew he looked hot… and wow. He already looked a lot better, she noticed in passing as the door creaked open and the rustling noises struck her ears of someone entering. Her blood had clearly done him a lot of good. The red was gone from around his eyes, he was a hell of a lot less pale, and she could swear his muscles had plumped up from ‘way too lean’ to ‘still a little spare but just pumped some iron’, which…

She was really, really okay with how his arms looked right now, and they definitely needed to make sure he stayed fed. Human-fed, not butcher-pig-fed. For the rest of forever, if this was the difference. Plump him up a little more; get rid of the rest of the pale. And keep those arms looking like that, because, mmmm. 

“You want, um…”

“Just put it over there, by the lady, thanks Rinne. There’s a good girl.”

Buffy shot a glance at the newcomer, noted with some relief that this was a different member of the court. Some redhead with serious boobs and…

Okay, she was green. And had little horns.

But those boobs though. And she was really not wearing much more than Buffy was right now, and how hard were these demon girls working to try to get in Spike’s, um, good graces? Because unless that was standard demon-girl attire, or they were going for a bikini-belly-dancer-style uniform code here at the hotel…

“Ta, ducks. Be off, will you? Got to feed up my bird.”

The green girl shot Buffy a look of pure venom laced with some serious confusion, and fled, door slamming behind her with some pretty impressive frustration.

In the subsequent silence Spike nonchalantly leaned over her to tug the tray further up from the foot of the bed. “Oh, good. They brought you the nice stuff. Had them nick this from a sporting goods place down the way that has better than the standard run of emergency food, yeah? Throw in a bit of the bread from that little bakery-café next door and we’ve been keeping the humans in good fettle, though the pastries are bound to run out or go off soon. Bit passé already, I’m thinking.” He lifted a little loaf of something that looked, she thought, like a vaguely-desiccated cinnamon roll and sniffed it. “Dunno, luv. Up to you what you think. I tend to take mine dipped in blood when I eat this sort of thing back home, so it doesn’t matter as much at that point is it stale or not, though I won’t eat it if it’s got mold… What?”

“Am I going to mess up your demon politics by being here?”

He leaned back to regard her with a faint smile. “You worried about all the sour grapes from that lot, is it?” He shook his head and jerked his chin at the tray. “Don’t worry, pet. I’ll manage. You’ve burst their bubbles, yeah, but I wasn’t gonna sleep with any of ‘em anyway. All’s happened is they’ve been forced to admit it to themselves now. Though…” He frowned a little. “You might have to watch your back in case one of ‘em tries to off you in the corridors.”

Buffy lifted an eyebrow and, unable to wait anymore, darted a hand out to grab at the carafe of water—it was actually dewy on the outside, how were they keeping it _cold?_—poured herself a glass and chugged it with one finger upheld to signal a halt in conversation. Damn, that was good water, by the way, didn't even taste like bottle. That consideration dealt with for the moment, she set the glass aside and turned back to regard him plainly. “I can handle that, though I don’t think your human concubine knifing your girls-in-waiting is going to make you any more popular with the demon court…”

“Bloody hell, Buffy, you’re a wonder, you know that?”

She tilted her head and made a grab for the cinnamon roll. She knew she should eat the protein first, whatever it was, but it looked like some kind of reconstituted MRE stuff, and she was really just dying for the pastry, whatever hardened state it was in. 

She’d basically been living on protein lately. “I care about keeping you where you’re at. Your position protects all of us. The people you’re helping, you, me. Even Illyria, I guess, if she’s still doing that shifting-back-and-forth thing.” It was reasonable enough, she thought. Eminently practical, even. And when things were practical, she’d play her part, whether she liked it or not. Besides, this role came with considerable perks. “Is she?”

Spike’s face twisted a little. “A bit, though the less human contact she has the better. And I wasn’t talking about your grasp of demon politics, pet.” His hand rose to brush at her hair again, expression filled from eyes to jaw with that steady beacon of adoration that had once made her feel so endlessly uncomfortable, and now filled her with strength, hope. “I told the girl you’re no concubine, yeah? You’re my _lady_.”

She shrugged and tugged an admittedly tough, if not necessarily rock-hard, shred of cinnamon roll off the bun, sniffed suspiciously at it, and felt her eyes roll up a little at the scent of spices and dried-out frosting. /Oh God./ This was going to be so worth the stale. “I just feel like it’d be better for all of us if you called me your property instead of trying to, you know, elevate me above them.” She couldn’t take it anymore, shoved the wedge of hardened pastry into her mouth… and moaned a little at the still-buttery flavor. It rocked her, and she had to lean back on the bed. God, it was almost as good as sex.

It took a minute to work through it, get it soft enough to chew. Luckily Spike was too busy watching her performance with amused desire to interrupt her thoughts. 

After a minute or two of hard work she got it down enough to clear her mouth, sighed. “Wow. Okay. All I’m saying is, I don’t know the demon politics of you saying I own you or whatever, but I figure if I’m your human concubine, maybe it might rock the boat less? Since, you know, what they don’t know won’t hurt them, about what I actually _am_…” And she tore off another ruthless chunk of half-dead cinnamon roll and shoved it unceremoniously into her mouth. She’d never come near something this out of date in her regular life, but holy cow; right now it was just this side of the heaven she’d experienced before her resurrection, and… just, yeah.

Spike was eying her with considerable interest. “That what you wanna be? I can understand not wantin’ ‘em to know you’re the Slayer. That’s just diplomacy. Sure as bloody hell would help me keep the peace if they were in the dark about that… but it doesn’t much seem your style, luv. Playing second fiddle. You’re a leader. Don’t even know how to stand back in the shadows, if I know you.”

Once upon a time, Buffy had watched some made-for-TV movie sequel to ‘Alice In Wonderland' where Alice stepped through a mirror into bizarro-world. For Buffy’s money, this dimension was kind of like that. Everything was a little backward, a little topsy-turvy. Here, Spike was currently the leader. It wouldn’t change who and what Buffy was at core, but... it would give her guy a chance to test himself. Believe in himself. Already had, far as she could tell. If she tried to take over, she’d take so much away from him; so much he’d accomplished on his own, with hard work and sacrifice. Who knew what he could achieve on top of that if she didn’t rip it all out of his hands? 

It would be interesting to watch what Spike could do, in this demon-world in which they had found themselves, with support but without being controlled or used for a change. And it wasn’t like she was the expert here, so maybe it was time she sat back and admitted she could maybe learn something instead of taking everything on herself, trying to make things worse by taking over a situation where she wouldn’t see half of the subtle undercurrents. /Because let’s be real, Buffy. You’re good at a lot of things, but subtle isn’t really one of ‘em./

That had always been Spike’s jam.

Not to mention, if she told everyone here what she was, she’d make herself a bigger target than she’d been even on the hellmouth, here in a world entirely made up of demons. That just really sounded super exhausting. And if she _didn’t_, no one here would have any reason to take her remotely seriously, much less accept her as powerful and with any right to lead. In a dimension like this it was basically ‘no demon, no dice’. Fighting for any kind of respect while masquerading as a totally human piece of ass was probably impossible here, so it basically came down to two choices. Out herself and fight off the endless parade of assassins… or sit back, watch, and relax for now. 

Heck; the former sounded like _so_ much damn work. /And God, after The First and the Potentials, and now all the baby Slayers and playing general and all that crap… I could use some time off from being ‘the leader’ for a damn change./ Who knew how long that mood would last. /Probably exactly as long as our first fight over it, or till I see something going down I can’t stand to put up with without marching in to fix it myself. But till then…/ “Sounds like a nice little vacation, actually.” She grinned at him around a piece of tough bread. Wrapped her lips around it to suck off the crinkly, dried frosting and slowly pulled the damp offering out. “What do you think, Spike? Girl on a leash by day, power behind the throne by night?”

She swore she could _hear_ him get a hardon. He shifted a little in the sheet and rubbed a hand through his already-disastrous hair, and she saw that the limb was shaking a little. “Bloody hell, woman, you make a man wanna eat you alive.”

“You already did that,” she pointed out with a saucy smile, and turned back to the food with a gesture that invited… assistance. “Now feed me up, or a girl might think twice about sticking around to be ravished by the lord of Beverly Hills.”

She really, really enjoyed making him groan like that.

***  
  
  
  
  
Next chapter = moar nekkid catching up and general mutual-appreciation-with-important-filling-in-the-blanks.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright... Wrapping up the 'catching up' portion of festivities, a final bit of talk and flirt with catharsis...

The bathroom of the Presidential Suite—or, she supposed it was now the Demon-Lord Suite—of the Beverly Hills Hotel (and current Palace) was just really amazingly palatial, and she was going to move in. To hell with the bedroom. She could _live_ in here. 

Everything was in either black or a sort of rose-colored marble, which she supposed was kind of in keeping with the overall ‘pink palace’ theme they had going on in this place before the city had fallen into hell. There were big, wide, beautiful ‘his and hers’ sinks, a jacuzzi tub, a glassed-in shower practically the size of her old bedroom back home. It even had some of those multi-headed hydra jet things she had only ever seen in movies, and how effing unfair was it to have all this and not have water-pressure?

That was when Buffy knew she was in hell. 

At least the toilets flushed, by some miracle. She had been grateful for that joyful news when she’d been at Wolfram and Hart. Apparently when you moved a city to a hell dimension, you brought the sewer system with you, but not the incoming water lines. You left those behind in LA proper, because why not live up to your standards as a hell, but still have decent sanitation or something?

She didn’t really want to know where the stuff from the toilets was going right now. She was just glad it _was_ going, because talk about a logistics problem! Though, granted, the stuff that was coming back up from under wherever LA was now couldn’t really be classified as ‘water’ by any normal standards. Just like the stuff in the fountains it was dark brown, almost sludgy, it moved so slow, and was definitely not something you wanted to investigate too closely. Keeping the bowls clean was out of the question. It left a heck of a slick of slime at the bottom of the tank and any sink you tried to use, and it didn’t smell great—kind of like the water in some kind of swamp—but it made the stuff in the toilets depart for other zones, so that was really all anyone could ask, right?

Hopefully it wouldn’t end up clogging the lines, because not having working toilets would be a sad day in, well, hell. “We can get someone to cart up some actual water for me to have a bath in here, right?” she asked longingly, staring into the dry-as-a-bone tub. Tub being a total misnomer. It was like something from a soap opera. It had _jets_. And was about seven feet long. You could stretch out your entire body in that thing. Like, completely. Submerge every inch of yourself in steamy wetness. Wring out every muscle…

“I might be convinced to ration out the water,” Spike answered, leaning naked against the doorjamb behind her. “There’s still quite a bit left in the pool we could heat up. Folk have been using it for bathing. Depends on whether you wanna share.” And he leered companionably at her butt so that, when she turned back to him she caught his eyes darting back up all lascivious, his tongue curling behind his teeth. No real calculation behind the look, though. 

“You just want to get me wet and on top of you,” she accused blandly, testing the figurative waters. This was relatively… uneven ground for them.

His expression cleared out, turned to what she’d privately termed his ‘duh’ face. “Well, yeah. But that doesn’t mean I meant it.” He nodded at the room, chin pointing at the tub with every ounce of the lewd vanished from his face and frame as if it had never been, replaced now with a faint, self-mocking smile. “I’ll see what I can do, Buffy.” 

She had to give him credit. He was endlessly good for her ego. But he was also being extremely careful. Not that she blamed him. This would probably always be a tender area between them.

Coming back around, she idly fingered one useless faucet and sighed. “I know it probably seems like a serious overuse of resources, but I can only stand so many sponge-baths before I just feel totally unclean. And I’m not sure if I can handle walking around smelling like sex forever…”

“Smell like a treat,” he answered in a low, appreciative growl as she passed him in the doorway, and sniffed her neck suggestively. He seemed hella relieved, honestly, to have her out of the bathroom. And, she noticed, he had come nowhere near crossing the threshold while she had been in there.

She fought to keep it light. “Well, not everyone’s a perma-horny vamp, so.” 

“Your fault, Slayer.” He followed her, probably grinning again judging from his voice, as she paced through the rooms of the suite, touching things here and there. The place had a full kitchen, jeez. Not that any of it would work, sans electricity and running anything, but still. Also a den… “If you can’t get cleaned up, ‘spose the only thing to do is keep shagging, yeah? Since you don’t feel right parading around in the buff? And you said you’re tired of the togs you had on…”

She shot him a tolerant glance. “You’re going to hold my new clothes hostage till when, exactly?” 

Seemingly fully recovered, he surged forward, caught her around the waist, and… Since when had he ever been so exuberantly playful with her? “Christ, Buffy; I would keep you naked and in this room for the rest of our mutual lives if I could and you know it.” He had his face buried back in her neck again, drawing in long draughts of her scent. “‘S not just the shagging, yeah? Just knowing you’re safe…”

She slid a hand over his hair. “I know. I was scared for you, too. Every second.” And then she shoved him firmly away to look him in the eye. “But I know you have work to do. And so do I. Work that’ll probably get done a lot easier if I don’t smell like some vampire’s sex toy…”

He blinked as he reluctantly released her, looking taken aback. “Not suggesting I’d ever keep you a woman of leisure, Buffy, since I like my bollocks where they are, but… Might a bloke inquire as to just what work you’re plannin’ on doing out here in this hellhole?”

She tilted her head thoughtfully in his general direction. “The people out there need protection, right? And I should probably know how they’re finding their way here…”

He groaned abruptly like she’d cut his legs off at the knee, and fell into the nearest chair. “Oh, bloody hell.”

“Which means I should probably know how this all works.” She waved a hand around her, then reached out for the plate she’d carried with her and set aside during her peregrinations. Popped another bite of something that had been labeled ‘cheese’ into her mouth, and ignored the overly ‘cheddery’ flavor. “I’m also dying to find out you ended up here in the Presidential Suite in the first place, if you started out in the basement. Who was involved and all that. It would really help me to navigate the politics of the place.”

He groaned again and laid his head back against the soft, poofy cushion-top of the ivory chair. “Buffy, I just got you back. Now you wanna go out there in a city full of hungry demons—hungry in more ways than one—all spoiling for a fight, and act like the good shepherd for all these bloody stupid pulsers as they toddle in lookin’ for a place to land…”

“Spike,” she intoned warningly; a clear reminder that she’d back him in public, but he would never control her in private.

He lifted his head briefly to eye her with a slightly wary look, sighed, and settled back into the chair. “I’m just sayin’. God knows I know you can handle yourself, but you don’t even know what it’s like out there. I mean, you’ve seen it, yeah; but things are changing so fast that _I_ can’t even keep up…”

“So tell me. What do I need to know?”

“Oh, bleeding, sodding hell.” He leaned forward, one of those snake-fast, striking motions of his, and sat staring up at her with elbows on his knees and an entreating expression on his mobile face. “I’ll tell you. And you decide. But Christ, Buffy; I’d like it the hell of a lot better if we at least went at it together, yeah? So I could watch your back?”

She was startled at that. “You’ve been out there gathering in survivors?”

“Every night,” he told her grimly. “Some of the days too, since they’re so bloody long here. God knows I get plenty of bleeding down-time here.” He shot a glare out the window. “Bein’ able to be up in the daytime sets my whole clock off half-cocked; dunno when to rest.” He rubbed one hand over his face, looking suddenly weary, and worn. “Between that and thinkin’ about what happened downstairs and worryin’ about you I haven’t half slept since we got here, yeah? Patrolling for survivors has kept me sane.”

/Oh, man./ She moved to squat in front of him. Cupped a hand around his wrist. “Tell me?” she asked, softly.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

***

“…So then she had me brought up again. Charlie-boy was there… Christ, Buffy; he’s a sodding bastard of a fledge. You know how some vamps come in with some self-possession, yeah? Stay a bit in control, don’t let the demon take over, keep a lot of themselves? Happens a lot when they’re capable. Tough… or just know who they are, and do or don’t wanna be…”

She nodded from her seat, remembering Holden from high school and his love of psychology. Wondered just which one William had been.

“Gunn’s like that. He knew enough to keep it under wraps, and he’s the hell of a brawler, yeah? So he’s ahead of the game. He’s no thoughtless bloodsucker. He’s made himself the local vamp king almost without trying; already has a nest of minions the size of what I hear old Batface had in Sunnyhell when you came to town…”

/Oh, man; that’s fast work in two weeks./ 

“And because he knows himself… he thinks he’s kept himself together, but…” Spike shook his head, looking more pained than she thought she had seen from him in a while. “His demon’s got him twisted up. I can already tell. He thinks what he’s doing is for the good of everyone, or the demon wouldn’t get it past what’s left of his old Charlie-boy conscience, but he’s just foolin’ himself. And that’s worse sometimes, yeah, when the demon works what’s left of the man? Makes him think he’s still something he’s not anymore, then gets him to do things he never would’ve, if he was still the one in charge.” Spike looked away, out through the sliding glass onto the balcony and into the orange light of the perpetual sunset here. “You sometimes can’t come back from that, once you realize… all the things you did, thinking they were the right things, and knowing finally they were all the wrong ones in the end.”

He’d better not be thinking about them. About things he’d done between them that had been… the few times he hadn’t loved her well. About that one room, and that one night… “Spike.”

His gaze jerked back to hers, and he shook it off. “Anyway, Charlie-boy’s not really Charlie-boy anymore. He just thinks he is. So he didn’t want me. Not unless I was gonna join him in wreaking hell and killing Angel. And don’t get me wrong; my grandsire’s a right git, but he’s also a broken-backed human right now who’s responsible for not a whit of this but gettin’ us here, maybe. So I’m not gonna join up with a mission like that with some prat of a fledge, just because he got it in his head all this is Angel’s fault, and killin’ him’s gonna set it all right again somehow.”

Buffy looked down between her feet where she had finally pulled up a chair. Spared a moment of regret for the bright-eyed, optimistic guy she’d only barely met. Sometime they’d probably have to dust him, now. Maybe not, of course. She had learned that not all vamps needed dusting, but…

Most still did, sadly.

“Anyway,” Spike went on regretfully, “After he turned her down and beat her at her own game, Non decided I wasn’t worth anything to her anymore, so she was about to off me an’ what was left of our little group. Maria tried to stop her…”

/Oh./ She supposed maybe she owed the little bitch after all. Damn it.

“Course, all Non did was rake the girl over the coals about her mixed loyalties…”

And, Buffy was tense again. 

“…Then got all brassed off and tried to behead Big Blue…”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I couldn’t watch, since she was in Fred-mode right then and I was sure she was a deader. But she did another shift right then—think danger brings it out in her, yeah?—and the axe shattered when it hit her. Fred Sonja broke out and started tearin’ through every demon Non had in her little army. Don’t mind sayin’ I was ready to give a cheer…”

Buffy nodded briskly. She also owed Illyria something. Would an ex-demon-god-thing accept, like, a drink, or a coupon for a free sparring match or something? Spike had said she liked a good tussle now and then.

The weight of a tug on the blood-bond caught her attention. Spike’s eyes, she noticed, were on hers once more, full of some undefinable emotion. “I think Blue didn’t like hearing what went on between me and Spider-girl, ‘cause she kissed me during all this ruckus, like I was her property and I’d strayed or summat…”

/Okay, maybe cancel the coffee date with Illyria./ “Is this ‘pet’ thing going to be a problem?” Buffy ground out, because just exactly how many demon women was she going to have to fight to keep her damned vampire?

Spike sighed and shook his head. “I’ll keep on it, luv. Do me a favor and don’t try to fight her, yeah? I’d prefer your head without a pretty blue hole through the middle of it. Not that I don’t have all the bloody faith in the world in your skills… but on the off-chance you ever died again, fair warning, I’m comin’ right after you.”

She stared at him in shock. “What, you mean if I…”

He met her gaze steadily. “Not gonna stay in the world one more time without you in it, Buffy. I lose you again and I’m out of it.”

/Oh, God…/

“Anyway,” he went on briskly as if nothing momentous had just happened, “Non was about to suck the soul out of the last of our humans when Conner waltzes in pretty as you please…”

“Wait.” She was still fighting to get her brain back on track. “Conner is… this kid Angel has with…” She shuddered internally. “Darla…”

“Yeah.”

/But that’s…/ “How old can he _be?_” she demanded. “Didn’t Darla get brought back like, what? Just a couple years ago…” /And how the heck did I never hear about this?/ Though, now that she thought about it, it would be something Angel would maybe try to avoid telling her, since letting her know he’d slept with Darla and had a kid with her wouldn’t necessarily do his image any good in her eyes. 

It was a worse blow to said image to think that he would omit something so vastly important simply because he didn’t want her to think ill of him. She would have, maybe, but by then… Well, hell. That was around when she’d been sleeping with Spike, so, yeah. Two could play at the game of ‘guess who’s doing things that might not make an ex jump for joy’, but did Angel see her hiding things? 

She hadn’t, like, called him and informed him that she’d been fucking his grandchilde, okay; but she hadn’t gotten pregnant by Spike either. Not to mention that there had been no _reason_ to inform Angel of that affair; not in any official capacity, whereas when it came to something like two vampires capable of making a baby who had abruptly grown up and become some sort of ‘daywalking’ whatever… That _did_ impinge on the professional for her, and merited at least, like, a courtesy-call. Hiding it because judgment and Darla was…

Life went on, shit happened, and when it came to informing her about things that impacted her as the Slayer, she had thought they had long since agreed to be professionals, and leave the personal out of it.

“Apparently,” Spike was telling her, “he got raised in a hell dimension himself, the poor tosser. Some right shithole called Quor’toth. Came prancing back when he was a teenager. Bit of a prat for a while, I hear, but then he’s got reason, considering who his father is…”

“Spike…” Buffy interrupted wearily, though honestly she could understand his perennial irritation with his grandsire by this point. She was starting to become more than a little annoyed with Angel herself. 

It interrupted the story, though.

Spike reined it in with obvious effort. “Anyway, I suppose it can’t have been easy being brought up in hell with some vampire-hating bastard raising you what has a grudge against your parents, so it’s amazing the little git is even sane. It’s like spending time with Dawn a few years ago, if she’d been raised in hell and told you were everything she was supposed to hate.”

/God, what a thought./ Actually, Buffy really didn’t want to contemplate that. Dawn was tough enough on a good day without… 

Jeez.

“So, give credit; he comes in and does the right thing. Tossed out some lines about how he’d heard Non was taking a lot of human captives, said he’d come to investigate. Guess he and some human woman and a couple of allies you don’t know have been setting up a bit of an underground railroad. Good lad. Any road, he was spyin’ about, saw us about to be executed; stepped in. Saved the lot of us… even if he babbles his head off while he fights like a little ponce.” Spike shrugged and rubbed his fingers together like he was dying for a cigarette. “Brassed Non off enough she tried to feed off him, but he’s the child of two vamps. Couldn’t get a thing off him. So she sent her telepath after us all.”

It sounded like a confusing mess. God, she wished she’d been there to help. She could have just lopped off this bitch Non’s head for them all and they could have had breakfast in that gorgeous dining room, after. Maybe there wouldn’t have been so many human casualties… /_Dammit,_ Angel!/

She knew Spike could read her like a book, from the wry expression on his face. “Noelle was a Sadecki; Non was using the slag to control her entire flock of girls, yeah? Noelle tried to mind-control Illyria… and earned herself the hell of headache when she found out that whatever they kept seein’, there’s no human girl in there to control.”

So maybe things might have been a bit more complicated than she’d thought, between the life-sucker and the mind-controller.

Still. It was hella frustrating in retrospect. 

“Havin’ her try knocked Illyria back into Fred-state for a bit, though,” he went on reflectively. “Took her some time to gather herself and kill the Sadecki. Got myself free in that time, though, with Maria’s help, since all the girls were free of Noelle’s influence…” He shrugged and spread his hands. “Then Ms. Clean took my part…”

“Ms. Clean?”

Spike looked mildly amused. “Actual name’s Esmerelda Gerralk, but the other fits her better. Statuesque and bald, yeah? Sleek sort. Half-Dahrekhi. She stays down at Hef’s Bungalow; you haven’t seen her yet, most like.” Buffy blinked at the picture. “She liked the look of me too, I reckon; or maybe she just didn’t want to keep puttin’ up with Noelle, so she backed me…”

The words burst out before Buffy could censor them. “I mean, God knows you’re pretty, but how many of these girls am I gonna have to fight to keep them off of your bod?”

Spike just smirked at her and went on without pause. “She and Maria led the charge while I took out Non. I beat the shite out of her.” He looked down. “She was dyin’, so she went after Jerry Johns. Started turnin’ him into a zombie. And Blue thought it best to keep her from powerin’ up, is all I can guess, so she… did him.”

Buffy was floored. “Oh. God.”

“Yeah. I mean, I dunno. Maybe he couldn’t’ve been saved by then, but who knows.” His tones had gone quiet with regret. “Nothing to be done about it after that, I suppose. Gave me the time to kill Non, while she was still reeling; and since Conner was there while we were finishing our little coup, we set up our leg of the underground railroad with him before he scarpered back to wherever the hell he’s been hiding out.” He looked down between his hands where they dangled over his knees. “I had Ms. Clean do away with the zombies Non made. Locked ‘em all up down in the dungeon where they’d kept me. Burned ‘em. Thought to burn the whole bloody place and move somewhere else, but I wanted to stay close so you could find me…”

/Oh God…/

“And any road, this is a nice enough headquarters, so long as you don’t go down to the dungeons. Isn’t pretty. Was a kindness to do away with that lot, with no cure for ‘em." His mouth tightened a little. "That bitch barely started making inroads here. In a month or so the place would’ve been full of the fucking things. We’d’ve been up to our necks in her victims and would’ve had to move on, but instead there was just our flock and about ten others. Manageable…”

/Oh man./ He was trying to blow it off, but she could see he was shaken by the losses. More, maybe, by how they’d had to dispose of them. Burning anything alive, even life-sucked zombies, was just no fun for anyone. 

He shook it off then and straightened up. “We buried the remains so they didn’t stink up the place.” Oh, crap, he was really letting her see his emotions, now, biting his lower lip and looking away for a second. “I buried Johns out there, by the pool.” His voice had a faint tremble to it; one only she could hear. Anyone else would have thought he was recovering really well from what he’d been through, but really, he just really, really wasn’t. Every line of his body betrayed to her that he was not nearly so sanguine about that man’s painful death as he liked to pretend. “And here we are.” 

/And there I was, being absolutely zero help./ She sat back in her chair, impressed and depressed and just about everything in between. “Oh man...”

He waved a quick hand to cut off any apologies she might make. “Yeah.” His voice was rough as he very quickly changed the subject. “Now it’s all about appearances. I keep the girls about for the look of it…” He actually squirmed a little and looked slightly embarrassed. “You know; the playboy image helps, politically-speaking, when it comes to the other demon-lords. They’d never know the lot are actually fighters, yeah, if all they do is loll about lookin’ like snacks. Hidden army, right under their noses…”

/Oh!/ Buffy hadn’t thought of that angle, but it explained a lot about the wardrobe, or lack thereof, around the place. /Crap, does this mean I’m gonna have to dress up like…/ 

/Well, when in Rome. And, to be fair, Buffy, it’s not far from what you did all through high school with the whole demon-bait-and-switch deal./ She so wasn’t going to do mostly-naked, though. Tastefully sexy with a touch of slutty, she had done and would do again. That could even be fun, but it was as far as she was prepared to go.

And no catsuits.

“…But if we ever get a visit from some other jumped-up ponce, they’ll just think I like havin’ a harem,” Spike continued and winced visibly, straightening to glare at her in fierce defensiveness.

It was cute. He was so totally worried that she might think he was screwing around. It was almost funny, because he’d half not wanted to even after they’d broken up, before. Hadn’t for all those months at her house, when he’d certainly been at perfect liberty to do whatever, because they had been… who even knew. 

The thought that he would now was ludicrous. “I can see that,” she answered calmly, and sipped her water to avoid leaking a smile. 

He shifted a little, looking slightly less uneasy. “And, havin’ ‘em keeps the Smurf on guard enough she doesn’t flit back and forth between faces too much.” His face darkened slightly. “A’ course, that means they’ve all got a bit of dirt on us, since I’ve got to try not to let anyone outside of here know she’s still snuggling up to a human corpse upstairs…”

“Oh my God, she still _has_ that thing?” Disgust flooded every part of Buffy’s being. She could understand not being able to let go, sure. And yeah, she knew demons had different standards when it came to… stuff… but that was so not Wesley anymore, and by now the body must be just… /Ugh./

Spike clearly shared her disgust by this point. “She went out and picked it up again after we liberated the place. We keep tryin’ to get rid of it, but she just goes and finds it again. Thank Christ at this point it’s startin’ to mummify a bit.”

“Oh my _God_,” Buffy whispered again, and note to self to never go anywhere _near_ that room.

“It’s a trial,” Spike murmured, “tryin’ to protect her too. I don’t mind sayin’ it’s a big gamble, since we can’t let anyone know. Havin’ her up there all Old One an’ that is all that keeps the other Demon Lords away. They’re a mite scared of her, so I doubt they’ll attack as long as she’s on top. But…” He shrugged, flicked his fingers as if casting aside the weight.

/He’s caught between protecting weakness from within and from without. His own demon retinue knows there’s vulnerability on the inside. Any one of them could blab to these other demon lords. And he’s out every few hours rescuing humans, barely sleeping… 

/I could have _been_ here. I could have…/ 

Instead she’d been stuck _there,_ completely safe at Wolfram and Hart, for a whole extra _week,_ because Angel hadn’t bothered to tell her that that spell had worked, and… just…

/Breathe, Buffy. Start from now. You can’t fix then./ That had been one of her hardest lessons in life; learning to walk away from the past. She still had a tough time with it, when it came to certain transgressions. /Stick to what you can do to help./ 

“I was about to leave,” Spike informed her quietly, breaking into her thoughts. “Go and look for you, now that things are getting stable.” 

God, could he read her mind, really? Was the bond that strong on his side? Or was he really just that good at reading _her?_

“It’s just… each time I go out, seems like, somethin’ goes pear-shaped with Illyria, or…” His face twisted then, with remembered agony, and his fingers tightened on his thighs. And something wrenched on the bond between them; a tearing feeling. 

/Oh God./ “Don’t. Spike.” It would have completely destabilized everything he’d built, trying to come after her. He had been torn between two poles, two priorities; the personal need to be whole… and the mission. She knew _exactly_ how that felt. /God knows I do./ “You did what you had to. I… should’ve found a way to come back to you sooner.” Him, trapped down there by the Seal, tormented by The First, for weeks, while that goddamned Turok-Han…

He’d been tortured again, here. She knew it without asking. The new scars… /I could’ve _stopped_ it./ “I should never have stayed away so long.”

“Buffy, don’t. If you do, I’ll…”

She waved a hand, staving off the tears, the lump in her throat. “We can’t, can we? It’ll just… get too big.”

“Yeah,” he answered softly. 

“I promise you,” she told him quietly, and took his hands in hers. “Never again. You come first…”

To her shock, he recoiled. “Buffy, you can’t say that! You of all people…”

It pissed her off; that he would shrug away the gift once more; the wholehearted gift of her love. “Hey! Dammit; you don’t get to _tell_ me…” It would all crash down, now, if he denied her again. The bare thought of it flooded her with naked fear; the kind that had always turned, for her, to wrath. /Anger is always easier./ “Just, _no_. Everything else is _over_.” It would hurt him for her to say it so straight-up, but it was fucking true, okay? “This is _all_. It’s just _us_. For you, for me… So this has _got_ to work, do you _get_ it? I’m not _letting_ you get away! Do you get that I almost _lost_ you again because I stupidly let _Angel_ split my focus? You _are_ the mission now!”

She had never seen him look so stunned… or so stricken. “Buffy,” he whispered weakly. “Christ, I’m so sorry. That you had to give up… so much…”

“Don’t.” /As if that’s even the _point_./ She wasn’t going to let this happen. /I _made_ my choice, you idiot./ Wouldn’t let the tears fall. “I don’t regret it, Spike, okay? You don’t know what it was like without you. I’m not gonna take it back.” She couldn’t. Regret it would kill her, and taking it back would mean comparing; the living cold, and the dying heat. It would mean admitting that… That the sacrifices might even have been worth it. Her mind had to shy away from that thought. 

Her voice went deadly low. “And I thought I already told you, if you ever tell me what I do and don’t feel again…”

He looked away, hands trembling. When he spoke, it was with the quiet of confessional. “I didn’t say it for the reason that you think.”

/God; don’t lie to me, William! Not now!/ “I know you didn’t believe me.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I didn’t. I couldn’t. But that wasn’t why I said it, for all that. Know how badly you wanted me to believe it then, say it back. But…”

It rose in her, trembling. Moment of truth. /Oh God, what if he really was just… _done?_ What if he’d _wanted_ to leave? What if… in that moment, he was _glad_ it was killing him? It would make sense./ Except… he seemed to be telling her that that hadn’t been the reason. “Then… _why?”_ she whispered, and tried not to recoil from the words that hung between them in the oven-like air.

Clear, sapphire eyes pierced her, miserable and insistent… and knowing her. “Because I realized in that moment that I was goin’. And if I let you love me—right then, down there—it would mean that I was leaving you. And I’d promised myself that I’d be the one git who never would.”

It broke her. The sobs came. The tears. She wiped them impatiently away with the back of her hand as the relief cascaded through her. “Oh. God. Oh God, Spike…”

“Shh… Shh, pet, oh Love…”

She had never heard him say it that way before, as he tugged her into his arms. She could swear she could almost hear the capital letter on the word; the new, careful lilt that said this was no relaxed, easy endearment. “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t ever do it again… and I promise I won’t ever… push you away. Not anymore.”

He scoffed slightly into her hair, but lovingly. “Pet, don’t make promises you can’t keep. But don’t worry. I sure as bloody hell haven’t let you chase me off yet, and I’m not about to start now.”

It made the old shards of fear-anger come back; just the edges, but they could still cut. “But you _did_. I did. You stayed away finally because you were afraid of what I… Of what we…” She pushed out of his arms to grab his hands, bore down hard and tight. _“Please, _Spike. I don’t want to ever hurt you like that again. I promise to try to… stay open, and to keep you in my heart, if you promise to believe in us, and not to let me be stupid. I don’t ever want…”

“It’s a deal, Love.”

Her eyes fell closed, and she concentrated on breathing. On some level she was aware that she was kind of a mess again, but she also knew that he wouldn’t hold it against her. He never had. Spike was basically the only person who had seen her cry since, like, whenever, and she was pretty sure he treasured it for some stupid reason. She’d used to think it was because he’d liked feeling powerful, or liked seeing her weak, or broken down or something; but that had been her own pride and fear talking. 

She knew what it was now. He was honored by her trust. “I love you so much,” she whispered, because he needed to know it; as often as possible, from the bottom of her heart. 

His hand rose, brushed her cheek. Cupped it. “Love you so bloody much, Buffy. You’re the One.”

It made her shake. “So are you.”

The tremors in her traveled to him. Slid into his voice. “Say that to me and I’ll give you anything. The soddin’ world.”

She could breathe. She _could_. “I’m going to be here,” she told him fiercely, and opened her eyes, burning on his. “One hundred percent, okay? Partners. In all of it. You’re not gonna stop me. I’m _helping_, alright? What can I do? Because I’m _in.”_

His eyes kindled. Glowed into hers. “Christ, Love, to have you say that, look at me like that…”

She caught his hand fiercely away from her cheek; gripped it tight between hers. “Okay, dammit. Tell me how it is. How are things, really? What’s… um…" She floundered for a second, fighting to kick her brain back into working order. "What’s the water situation?”

He blinked at her abrupt change of tack. "The…"  
  
"You had some that was even a little cold, when I needed it." /Help me out, here, Spike. Help me focus so I don't get all… fall-apart-y./ There wasn't time for it.  
  
"Oh. Yeah. Well, we've a few batteries gathered up for one of the refrigerators, though no doubt they'll fail soon…" He sat back a little, looking a hair scattered. "And the hotel had this bloody great filter called a Nikken down in the lobby, full of charcoal and the like, though no telling how long it’ll last before it stops working. Filters the pool water for drinking, the unused toilet tanks and the spas and the like.” His shaken voice steadied a little as he recounted the current state of affairs for her. “Still got a good bit of that, since there’s only about fifteen people here, not counting the refugees as come through. We ration it, though, when it comes to other uses, as there’re no water heaters in the place. Whole sodding establishment was fitted with those heating coils to conserve resources during the drought. The girls raid around for potables and food what's easy to eat without heating it…”

Buffy nodded, filing all this away. Talking logistics definitely helped with emotional stability. “We’ll have to cast a wider net one the pool runs down. There’s probably no shortage of pools around here, even if half of Beverly Hills probably did the same conversion in the last couple of years…” Thoughts of raiding, of course, couldn’t but bring to mind memories of those last desperate months at Revello, and Spike at her side when no one else was, to the point of dusting for her; and damn, damn, _damn, _she was so not going to cry, thinking about how she had really just not held up her end this time around,_ dammit_.

She switched it up on him again. /Stick to business, and fix it./ “What about those refugees? Right now you just go out and find people, what? By smell or whatever, and gather them up here like you’re finding animals for the ark…”

He seemed bemused by her now, watching her with an oddly admiring expression in his eyes and on his lips. “Sure. Humans and the occasional demon who isn’t likely to hurt anyone. Folk like Clem, yeah, and Lorne?”

“Right.” That wasn’t even a question. Not that she’d known the green guy, but she’d gotten no grr argh vibes from him. Quite the opposite. She’d practically wanted to hug him, like he was some kind of viridian, horned teddy bear. 

She pulled in a deep breath, forced her brain back together so she could work her way piecemeal through the problem. “And then you just… pass them on to this Connor kid and his friends, and the demon girls who decided to hang around… tend your wounds…” She did her best not to bristle over that part of it. “…And help you act like this is a normal demon court, just like Non’s was, and you’re bringing them all in for snackies? And Illyria, if you can keep her stable, what? Lends super-demon weight to the show by throwing her Old One vibe around whenever other big-time demons come to visit, and obliterates anyone who looks at either of you cross-eyed?”

Spike seemed to have regained his own equanimity, was now clearly amused by her summary. “That’s about the size of it, pet. We try our best to keep her interactions limited to the demons. It keeps her from snapping back to Fred. Which would probably ruin the illusion,” he admitted a little grimly. “Old Ones are supposed to be a bit more imposing than a slip of a girl with a Texas drawl. Don’t wanna know what the other demon lords would think, they saw her lose control like that.”

"Yeah.” Another breath, while Buffy pondered the situation from all sides. It had possibilities. /I can make this work. I can fit in here. I can… find a place in this dimension and… be useful. For one thing, here I can be part of a hidden army. A champion again, if quietly; helping people, not cooped up being a nurse./ “Anya said these guys were all huge, and normally weren’t the types to be smushed down into human bodies. She’s probably, what? Diminished by it? ‘Cause I know when the Mayor ascended he wasn’t someone you could just fold back up and stick back into his little human shell like he was some snaky accordion.”

Spike just sat there looking at her like she was an alien. “What?”

“Only you, Buffy.”

“Only me what?” she demanded, still a little emotionally stormy, and maybe worried that he might be judging her. 

“Nothing. I just reckon you’ve been on that bloody hellmouth for too long. Been through one too many apocalypses if you can talk about an ascended Old One like he was one of those pop-snakes you get in a can at a joke shop.”

She shot him a faint glare. “He so wasn’t. It took plastic explosives to get rid of him. And you saw what it did to the school.”

“Yeah, I did.” And his expression, glowing on her face, was full of sheer pride in her accomplishments; even the ones he had not seen, that it made her almost want to blush. “One of the things I love best about you, you crazy bint; when you go to war, you go balls-out, yeah?” He grinned then. “Something we have in common, I think.”

His clear admiration did a lot to restore her composure. She sighed theatrically, but did not refute his claim, because, okay… he was right. When it came to fighting, you could train and practice and be as disciplined as you wanted… but in the end, when you were in it, and you had to make decisions on the fly? That was all instinct, and gut, and heart, and flying by the seat of your pants, and blood. And it was then that, fighting side-by-side, she and Spike had always become a single unit; because their styles dovetailed completely in that arena, and… “I can’t wait to fight with you again now that we have this.” She lifted her hand from his, touched her neck where his bite—one of them and the most visible—lay on her skin to join them. And her veins sang in acclaim to this idea.

“Yeah?” he asked, and a slow smile came back to his face. “You fancy a bit of rough and tumble, luv?” He glanced around the room, his entire being lit up with expectation. “I can move the furniture. Wouldn’t take half a tic.”

Her hand dropped again, fingers catching in his. Folded them together. “Go out now,” she told him softly, and with what she hoped registered as smoldering promise. It was better than looking all weepy. “Fight side-by-side. Come back later; spar when I’m ready for more sex. Because we both know that’s how that’ll end.”

His eyes took the promise and ran with it. Then he scrubbed his free hand through his hair and sighed, but nodded, subsiding readily enough. “Now you’re all fueled up…” He tilted his head at her. “You had any sleep of late, pet?”

“Enough.”

“Alright.” He was not about to question or micromanage her. Not if he wanted to keep all his parts in place, and they both knew it. 

His nostrils flared, then. “We’re gonna go out and patrol, Buffy, we’re gonna have to get you cleaned up first.” He glanced down at his own long, naked form, smiled slightly. “And me too, I suppose, since I smell like your delectable self; or we’ll draw every demon in a mile looking for a taste.”

He was struggling to get back to business with her. Catharsis, between them, was still new; for the both of them.

Buffy felt the beginnings of a smile tremble on her lips. Not to reopen the painful subject, but if they were going to be living together, it was bound to come up. “I get the rationing thing, and I won’t abuse it from here on out, but if we can get enough warm water to make it a bath just this time…” she tried a winsome look, “there’s serious rewards in it for you.”

He was on his feet before she had really fully finished the sentence. “I won’t be half a second. Just relax, Buffy. Be right back.”

He was, she concluded as she watched his truly beautiful ass disappear to be framed in the main door of the suite, pretty whipped when it came to her. Which, you know… she had basically known for years, so why was she surprised? /I can so fit in here. This is going to work./ For one thing, whatever their relative positions would look like on the surface, they both knew who was on top when they came home at night… and that Spike would never want it any other way. 

Actually, when you got down to it, she was in a really nice, satisfactory position right now, considering she was technically in hell. Maybe later they’d sit out on the deck together and soak up what passed for sun in this place, and... /Is it bad that I’m kind of okay with being here? What does it say about me that I was so damn miserable in my own dimension, and I’m feeling so unbelievably comfortable here, in _this_ one?/

Probably it was just as much relief that she was back with him again. Probably soon it would all wear off and they’d be fighting. Or… /God, it’s scary how _good_ I feel, and I just don’t _want_ to feel guilty. Not for a minute. Maybe five? Just five minutes. About what I left behind, about finding happy moments…/

A heretical thought touched her brain, almost made her shy away. /Do I… _deserve_ to be happy?/

Terrifying concept, and it was probably best not to look too closely at that one right now. At any of it. That she felt something that might be _contentment_ right now. /Is that what this is?/ And why. Any of it. 

Or, if it came back to haunt her too often… Just blame it on the excess Spike-ness. After all, sufficient naked Spike, when they weren’t fighting and life was working out okay, was yummy in plenty to make any place feel like heaven.

“That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.” Lifting her half-empty glass of water, she made a silent toast to hell, and smirked at the toned ass of her own private demon-lord.

***  
  
  
  
  


a Nikken filter back then, especially the floor models, was a beautiful monster with a gorgeous, transparent central core holding about ten layers of serious, doomsday filtration you could use in straight-up survival mode, and held two or three gallons of water. They were hundreds of dollars and I LUSTED for one. Anyway, a rich hotel like this probably had one; those things made water taste like you were drinking pure ozone and were perfectly suited to the end of the bloody world besides.

I want to thank everyone for bearing with Month One of Spuffy's journey in Hell-A. Things will be both easier... and more complicated as we march on into their second month in Hell, and settle into their new iteration, as co-leaders and as a functional, loving couple.   
  
I'm excited to see how people react to our kids as things progress. See you next week!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait. Life got hard for a few days, but here we go.
> 
> **Quick warning** in this one, mention of menstruation play, so if that's not your jam, skip the italicized bit of conversation. It's a "trying to be real about it" sort of thing, so it might squick some folk.
> 
> I'm still sans beta on this one, so any mistakes continue to be my own.
> 
> Welcome to Month Two in Hell-A.  
I just love Month two. It's like... the couple-y, nesting month. It makes me grin from ear to ear.
> 
> Part of this chapter was written specifically as a tribute to OffYourBird. When you get here... I LOVE YOU, OYB, and you'll know which part is for you!!!!

**Month II: **  
  


It was stunningly easy to fit herself into the routine of things at the Pink Palace in Beverly Hills. For all her first two weeks in hell had dragged on as if they would never end, the next two literally flew by; a bizarrely wonderful pastiche of actually highly-satisfying days spent rounding up terrified humans and hapless, harmless demonfolk and herding them into the various rooms and basement storage areas of the hotel for triage, and ‘nights’ of…

Let it be said that the ‘nights’ were more than satisfying too. /Let’s just put it that way./ When you spent your days fighting side-by-side as much as they did… Well, they’d pretty much done that math years ago. And they were out together as much as possible now; really as much as Spike felt he could spare himself. Which was, honestly, most of the time now that he felt he and Illyria had pretty much consolidated their hold on the area. He only stayed at home base whenever he felt like a public appearance was necessary for some high mucky-muck demon-visit or something, which was also less and less common of late as the various petty demon-lets around the area stopped offing each other, consolidated power under three or five pretty mondo critters, and settled themselves into something approaching solid little city-states. 

Buffy tended to make herself scarce when the DL visits went down. She really wasn’t sure she could control herself when faced with the choice to either play politics or just assassinate whatever mini baby-eating kinglet had dropped in this time to see if an Old One really was part of the duo running Beverly Hills. Spike had assured her that while most of the current demon lords were little more than opportunistic bottom-feeders they could take out easily enough when the situation warranted, some of them might need a little more careful handling, so she figured she should do her part in the whole diplomacy department by just being absent. After all… she was pretty sure she couldn’t do diplomatic to their faces. 

More importantly, it seemed the better part of valor right now not to show their hands too soon. If they were going to start killing off other DLs, they had to be able to command the strength to hold those DLs’ territories, or else it would look pretty suspect to make a move like that. Someone might suspect they were just offing lords for no reason, and that might end up looking bad for their little underground people-saving enterprise. 

They needed the front if they were going to keep helping refugees.

The underground railroad out to Conner and Gwen and Nina’s place saw constant traffic, now Spike had less sporadic backup outside. Conner seemed a nice enough kid. Shaggy, brown-haired teen, looked nothing like Angel. Maybe a little like Darla, though Buffy barely remembered the crazy cheerleader-wannabe blonde from her first year in Sunnydale. The kid did however have some mannerisms that had to be inherited that reminded Buffy remarkably of Angel; and which, quite honestly, freaked her right the hell out, seeing them on some random kid. 

She did her best to avoid Conner after that. 

Angel’s son was dating the lightning-fingered girl, Gwen Raiden. She ran the safehouse with a human ex-cop—Kate—another blonde, incidentally, who had some kind of bizarre, contentious relationship with Angel (she really didn’t want to know) and who had apparently saved Conner’s butt when the place had first fallen into hell. Their other partner was a werewolf girl—Nina—who really didn’t seem like one here in what they were all beginning to affectionately refer to as ‘Hell-A’. After all, with the constant sun-and-moon thing happening, she never actually _turned_, per se; just spent a lot of time being moody and full of fight. Which, Buffy supposed, was probably helpful when you had to take other demons out all the time, and…

And if Buffy had always been able to differentiate between and even have empathy for a werewolf who just had the affliction of a demon placed on them, un-asked-for, which took them over and forced them to kill once a month without their soul knowing or having any control over the situation whatsoever, why had she never been able to feel the same for a vampire, who had, too, been removed from their daily life by a demon’s bite, unasked-for. The only real difference was, they didn’t switch back. Their new status was just the stuff of daily life. Was that why she had always felt it acceptable to hold the vamps responsible for their situation? Or was it because the werewolf didn’t _have_ to kill to survive and she had believed that vampires did (however erroneous that belief had turned out to be)? Or was it because, once she had known that not all vamps had to kill to survive, she found it even more appalling that so many did so anyway, and reveled in it? 

That did still appall her, yes, but then she didn’t hold it against hawks that they killed mice, or cats that they murdered more than their fair share of songbirds even when they were fed plenty of kibble; so why be angry at a creature who actually had no other food source? And why had she, most especially, taken out that rage on one individual who had chosen not to murder, and had in fact done everything she had asked instead? And yet he had remained, somehow, in her eyes, the kneejerk evil she most needed to denigrate and destroy. Considered unnatural, felt he had no place in the universe.

Was it because he had always seemed so human, that she had unconsciously held him to human standards, when really he had been behaving better by far than the standard she should have held him to, which was, essentially, the Angelus standard? Or was it only because she had been bred to protect the population they were designed to hunt for food? Were vampires the cats and she, bred from the mice, indeed some kind of cat-mouse-hybrid? 

Was she really, as the Scourge leader had implied, little more than a sheepdog, mindless as a fledge and running on mere instinct; reacting without higher thought to a supposed threat… whether it was behaving like one or not?

“A little more on top, luv.”

She pulled in a tight breath and held it, impatient. “Spike, you can’t even see yourself in a mirror. How the hell do you know if it’s enough or not?”

He shot her a patient look under unfairly sexy eyelashes. “Been wearing eyeliner since before you were born, Slayer. Know how it feels when its right. Just a bit more up top, yeah, and we can get out there and kick some demon ass.” He was thrumming with energy, practically jittering under her hands. 

It was kind of like trying to put make-up on a pent-up toddler, and she sighed as she leaned forward to add yet another meticulous layer of guyliner to his lids. She would not admit that it looked unbelievably hot on him. He was already too damned smug as it was. 

She was going to screw his brains out later on while he was wearing it, but she was not going to admit that it was hot. “Somehow I’m pretty sure I didn’t sign on for make-up duty when I accepted the role of ‘favored concubine’. I mean, you have a whole harem out there.” She waved her free hand vaguely at the suite door.

“I let one of the other girls do this and you’d gut every one of them. Then you’d gut me.”

He had a point. “There. I think it’s good.”

He lifted a brow as she leaned away, pencil held at the ready. “Yeah? You like how it looks?”

She did not deign to dignify that with a response, instead turning away to cap the pencil with its little translucent plastic holder. “You ready to go now?”

“Hang on a tic.” And then his arms were around her like a cool, corded vice, and he was pulling her close. “You’re not fooling anyone, Slayer,” he growled into her neck, and the silver bracelets he had picked up from somewhere and now wore like some kind of armor pressed, hard into her shoulders like a chill brand.

She did her best not to shudder as the low rumble worked its way up her spine, as his hands slid into her hair. They had things to do, dammit. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” /Stupid blood-bondy-ness./ “C’mon. Let’s get out of here.”

His fingers pressed at the nape of her neck, prodding at spots only he knew about. Uber-sensitive ones. “You wanna put it off for a mo’?”

She leaned back to eye him with, she hoped, something approaching dignity… and did her best to breathe slowly through her nose. With pants this thin his erection felt pretty much like it was right _there_. Which, you know, was not helping at all with the pretending to be the reasonable adult in the crowd. “You’re insatiable.”

“I’m not the one wearing tight leather looks painted on, luv. You don’t want a bloke to get distracted, don’t wear trousers where I can tell where your soddin’ knickers end and I’m gonna spend the entire fight waiting for ‘em to tear open in front of me. It’s a mite distracting, yeah?”

She grinned at him. “Got nothing to say about my top?”

He groaned and held her away from him. “Buffy, you could wear a frilly, flowered frock to battle and I’d want to shag you senseless in the middle of it. You don’t need to ask me if this is winding me up.” And he looked her up and down with a light in his eye that said he was about one permissive word shy of tearing the halter-top away and settling in for the remainder of the evening.

“We just got cleaned up,” she pointed out, and tried a theatrical pout. “I thought the whole point was to go out there smelling a little less like sex.”

He groaned and lowered his forehead briefly to her neck, spent a moment breathing in the scent of her recently-renewed bite. “Let’s get out of here before you ruin me for life, you bleedin’ vixen.”

It took some doing, and a lot of willpower, but they managed to extricate themselves from each other and eventually headed out of their suite with some semblance of their public persona, which consisted nowadays of: ‘Spike; self-possessed Demon Lord’, pacing ahead in a gorgeous swagger, and ‘Buffy; human concubine’, following demurely a half-step behind at his right, gripping her axe—she really, _really_ liked that axe by now—and casting her eyes about her as they paced the pink-and-green halls. It actually made her feel a little like a bodyguard; which was kind of funny in its own way, since Spike could totally handle himself. But, yeah. No way anyone was ever hurting him again on her watch, and with the politics around here… you never knew. 

Besides. With the way things had been by the time she had come back, she felt like she really _had_ to be on her guard. Every demon woman in the damn hotel had it in for her; and, by virtue of her presence, might be a bit miffed at the Boss as well. 

Spike had had to train with all of them since the coup, because this Noelle who’d been controlling them all had apparently been the one giving them most of their fighting skills. It seemed they’d all taken the one-on-one fighting lessons very personally—/Like ya do…/—and now took certain exception to Spike’s having chosen to ditch them all and, relieved at an alternative to the all-too-mutable Illyria—go out exclusively with Buffy on rescues and all that. To his having gone back, like water flowing downstream, to training exclusively with her. Which was probably not the most politic thing for him to have done, and maybe he should have kept it up with the rest of them on a schedule or something, for diplomacy’s sake, but he didn’t seem interested even if Buffy would have been able to stand by and grate her teeth together and not kill them while they had their hands all over her guy. 

Especially that Maria. 

One of the green demon girls, the dark-haired Gris, was slowly coming around, along with her sister, the redheaded, horned ‘Rinne, but the rest were still being super wary; even prickly. And, to be fair, Buffy wasn’t going out of her way to be crazy friendly either. The best she could manage right now was ‘superficially pleasant’. But to be fair, she had literally only been away from her guy for what he called “a fortnight”, and all these chicks thought they had some kind of claim on him. Coming back had been this insane revelation; like, ‘Let me get this straight, you've only been set up here for a week and you've already got a demon-girl harem?’ 

She needed to get this thing figured out right now and then keep it figured. Stay on top of that food chain. It was kind of a ‘Who do I need to kill?’ sort of situation in the Pink Palace right now. 

Spike really didn’t get it, why she was always so on her toes around his little gaggle of gropey girls. Captain Innocent, all, “Seriously, Buffy; I didn't have my way with any of ‘em."

As if that was even… /That is _so_ not the point!/

The point _was_… they had been taking care of him and keeping him fit and generally playing her _role_ with him while she’d been off wasting time indulging Angel’s manipulative ass—part of her couldn’t quite believe she was thinking of her ex in those terms, but he had, really, honestly, been working her there in that last week, and that was the week in which Spike was up here cavorting with demon girls and getting abused by one of them, and, just… If the shoe fit—and besides. It was about time she faced the fact that she never actually _had_ taken care of Spike the way a partner should. Hadn’t even been able to admit that, for all intents and purposes he had _been_ her partner, in all things, for a very long time now. 

It was about time she started fixing that mess, and she had resolved to do it posthaste; _before_ one of these other girls jumped in to fill the gap. Because God knew they were all standing around ready and willing—especially that little spider-bitch Maria, who was literally hanging around every corner like she was just waiting for Buffy to vanish and give her an in—and just, hell no.

She knew she was being possessive and ridiculous and totally letting her pride get in the way and being stupidly competitive, but… she was feeling a little inadequate. For one thing… Spike had never not taken care of _her_. He _would_ never not. She was the one who was bad at this stuff, and that meant if she didn’t do her part, publicly _and_ privately, then that meant that she had failed; that she didn’t deserve this second chance with him, and maybe he _deserved_ to run off with some handsy demon girl with big boobs, and that was just…

“Hey, Boss.”

She tensed immediately. Maria had stopped in front of them, literally oozing sex appeal and flirtatious energy in her man’s direction, and in the process utterly ignoring Buffy’s presence, and holy wow her hand was itching on the axe-handle right now.

/Must not kill spider-bitch. Must not kill…/

“Maria.” Spike gave the perky little brunette a genial nod, stopping politely, but otherwise handed her nothing more. 

Of course, Spider-girl took this mere acknowledgement as encouragement, if not straight-up invitation. Her eyes got all glowy, the stupid cunt, and she sidled a half-step closer, because she seriously wanted to die. “Heading out for another roundup?” 

“It _is_ the sport we take up every day.” Spike sounded, at best, tolerant. But Maria was cheesing like she was in a spotlight just at having been granted the honor of a conversation with him, and okay; Buffy got it. When you had a crush—and yeah, she could see how Spike could be super-crushable, especially from a demon perspective. Heck, he was hot as hell from her own—things weren’t easy to turn off. Maybe the little bitch was even in love. But she had still completely abused him, and that was just…

/Double standard, Buffy/ she reminded herself grimly for the ninth time that day. Still, she had to fight incredibly hard against the impulse to step in front of her vampire and just really get in a good swing. 

Which was, of course, why they had _not_ had anything like a showdown yet. She had bowed to Spike’s sensibilities thus far, was letting him handle the whole Maria situation. It was, after all, his deal; something Buffy had walked into halfway through the story. And it was, she supposed, kind of touchy, politically. 

The other demon harem girls had apparently accepted their whole ‘favored concubine’ story, but the thing with Maria was a little more complex. For one thing… she had heard the truth from Spike down in the so-called dungeon, knew there was more to it from the start. Knew that Buffy ‘owned’ Spike. That he was bought and paid for, apparently. Which… logistically…

How did one purchase the services of a vampire, anyway, she wondered idly as Spike continued murmuring drawn-out pleasantries with the demon girl she had yet to kill. And just how many kittens would someone like Spike cost; a Master vampire fallen on hard times? 

At least thirty kittens, she figured. Easily, with that bod, and his fighting skills, and that incredibly talented… 

/Okay, ew. Buffy, you have really been here in this dimension for too long. It’s affecting your thinking./

“…So great at watching your back. I could…”

Buffy tuned back in on autopilot, because oh _hell_ no. But before she could just say fuckit and lop off the bitch’s head right then and there, Spike’s hand shot up to cut her off midsentence. “That’s the end of it, Maria. Look; you’re a skilled fighter, yeah? You and I both know it. But Buffy and I’ve been fighting side-by-side, and before that, against each other, since before you were even a twinkle in the demon-meter. She could take your head off soon as look at you. There’s a reason she only spars with me; ‘cause we don’t want to cause an inter-demon incident if she forgets to pull her punches and murders half the court just gettin’ her exercise in. So yeah. I go out with her. And you watch my door, right?”

Maria finally took this moment to acknowledge Buffy’s presence, eyes blazing, and wow. That kind of jealous rage was really just not going to end well. Girl to girl, Spike was so not going to be able to manage this much longer. 

One of these endless hell-days soon she and Spider-woman were going to have to have a pretty serious showdown, whether her vampire wanted it to happen or not. Things were just way too tense with her. 

Buffy just hoped she could handle the thing diplomatically. Or at least without too much bloodshed. You know, in the name of politics and stuff.

“Fine,” the spider-bitch spat finally. “Whatever. Get your rocks off rescuing the leftovers with your…” She sneered over his shoulder at Buffy. “Pet. I’ll be here waiting when you get bored playing with the human.” And she slipped away, extra arms darting out of her back in her agitation to swing her around the nearest corner in one smooth, arachnid motion.

That kind of maneuver always gave Buffy a shiver, no matter how many times she had seen it now, and just, ugh. Would Spike really have gone for that if they weren’t… God. Would he see it as… kinky? Because to her it just sounded hella scary. Like being in a cage while you…

Beside her, Spike sighed. “That’s gonna be a problem, isn’t it, luv?”

“Glad you finally caught up,” she answered dryly. /That’s my guy. Really good at reading people… unless they’re women who are into him. Then he’s dumb as a post./

He winced a little as they resumed their line of march. “Rotten luck. Need her on our side when things go down, yeah? She _is_ the hell of a fighter.”

/Good to know./ She knew Spike’s skills, obviously, and would take his assessment into consideration in view of future combat prep for the upcoming faceoff. After all, it wouldn’t do to underestimate spider-girl when they threw down. 

They exited the hotel, out into the not-so-bright orange “sunshine” that had become so commonplace after nearly a month in this oddly-comfortable hell. Spike nonchalantly spun the matching axe he’d found somewhere; a lazy twiddling of the fingers of his left hand, as if he were twirling a baton as they strode across the denuded grounds of the ‘palace’, and god, how had she ever denied to herself that his casual competence was unutterably sexy to her? 

She missed his duster, though; his second skin, even if she was enjoying the hell out of watching him flexing around in a t-shirt these days. That thing had been such a part of him, it was weird to see him fight without it. /But... hence the eyeliner./ About which she was not really complaining, so... 

“So. You think we’ll get a decent haul tonight?” He sounded… oddly distracted. Even jittery, which was… interesting.

She shot him a glance, assessing his mood. And caught on, belatedly, to what might be going on. 

He was hungry.

This happened every time they went out; more and more so as the week had dragged on. He wasn’t getting enough just dipping into her every few days. For one thing, he had to wait till she replenished herself on enough protein and carbs to catch up before he could take more—she swore something about this dimension made her re-up a little slower—and potent Slayer blood or no, he had already been playing catch-up before she’d come back. He was still looking a little hollow, badly needed a decent infusion from someone besides her.

The other day he’d lain back in bed, a particular intensity in his eyes that she hadn’t been able to read, and a hesitant tension she hadn’t seen since their early days. It wasn’t something she liked at all to see in him anymore, and it had made her feel naked under his gaze; had driven her to turn to him with a slightly hunted, _“What?”_

_“I was just wondering, Buffy… how long it’s been since you last had your courses.” _

His voice had been oddly stilted, almost diffident. And she for sure had no clue what he’d been talking about. _“My what now?”_

She had almost been able to _see_ him screw up his courage to be more pointed about… whatever it had been. And then he’d lifted his eyes to hers, frank as day. _“Your monthly, pet.”_

_/Oh./ _Well, that was a question. Or would have been, if she hadn’t had a certain amount of expedient foresight a few years back to jump on the experimental birth control bandwagon. Because she for sure hadn’t had time or safe passage to nip back to his apartment for her little backpack. And even if she had, her previous cycle of pills wouldn’t have done her much good anymore after this long a hiatus. Not that she would have brought months or whatever worth—god alone knew how long they’d be trapped here—so that point would have been moot. 

_“I, ah… don’t have that problem anymore. Back, um, right before we…”_ She had felt almost oddly shy discussing the matter with him, since she had managed to be one of the lucky few who never had to deal with the damned thing again, now beyond a few spotty days here and there. Which was the opposite of some people who’d tried her approach, or so she’d heard. But then, maybe that was another Slayer perk. _“In college, they had a kind of cheap medical insurance for students. It supplemented Mom’s, so I got on a trial of this new hormonal birth control. It’s… um, inside my uterus. It worked for me. It doesn’t work for everyone—actually, for some people it makes things worse—but it did for me. And it lasts for four or five years, so…”_

Which, thank god, considering this place was an even worse venue for random bleeding and fatigue than living on a hellmouth had been. Not to mention the lack of available showers, and the whole sponge-bathing thing, and, well… Back when they had first started their previous affair she had been incredibly grateful not to have to worry about it. To have the question in the air, even unspoken, would have been unacceptable. To have him leering about it while they were on such consistently uneven, mutable ground; or to have had to stay away, and hear his snide commentary about the reasons why. 

But it hadn’t been a problem, and she hadn’t had to think about it. _“You must’ve noticed.”_

_“Yeah. Thought there was something odd.” _He’d slumped a little, as if a hopeful expectation had abruptly given way on him._ “Seemed that whatever you might normally use should’ve run out by now.”_ He’d appeared somehow both relieved and crestfallen, and… was he _sad_ about it? 

/Does that _surprise_ you?/ her mind had chimed back at her. /Is that any kinkier than any of the other things you’ve done with him? He’s a _vampire_, for God’s sake, of _course_ he’d…/

And suddenly she had felt an irrational impulse to apologize. _“Would that even… help? It’s not… the same, is it?”_

That had brought his gaze up, a smile to light the sapphire with a hint of his old, devilishly instigating flair. _“Not the same, no. More of a choice confection.” _

_“Seriously?” _

_“What?” _He’d rolled his tongue at her, now actually daring her to wig._ “Everyone likes a nice snack. Like… eating cake in bed. Doesn’t keep you healthy, but it satisfies that… sweet tooth.” _He’d paused briefly, as if considering his words._ “‘Cept in this case it’s more like cheese or a fine wine has been aged a bit… but when you put it together with that incredible quim of yours, I’d imagine…”_

_“Oh God,” _she’d groaned, half-horrified by his pun and half-tolerantly-amused. _“You’re comparing me to a wine-tasting?”_

He’d only waggled his brows at her, inviting her to let her kinky side out to play. _“Oh, yeah. Everything’s an acquired taste…” _At her rolled eyes, his grin had faded to a thoughtful expression. _“Think of it this way, pet. You get free cleanup, a personal massage, you feel right nice after. I’m a bit taken care of, and it’s not blood you’re using anyway. Good bargain all ‘round, innit?”_

It wasn’t something she would have even contemplated in their past incarnation; would no doubt have punched him in the face for even hinting at such an arrangement. Probably would have called him ‘disgusting’, even while part of her would have been traitorously intrigued. No doubt _because_ she would have been, and she would have blamed him, somehow, for her own impulses. But now… Well. She had gone far past the limits of anything that looked remotely like embarrassment or modesty with him… and she never felt any revulsion anymore when it came to matters of diet. _“Maybe someday,”_ she’d told him quietly. _“Not much I can do about it now.”_

_“Yeah.”_ He’d looked more than a little regretful, if resigned. _“Probably best, in a place like this.”_

Not necessarily from his perspective, but then, he’d always been damned good at thinking of her safety before his own comfort, so… They stuck to a nip every three days. And he went on being hungry. 

And the problem was, there was tension built into his private meal-search. If he found someone who was otherwise available, it came with the added concern that he either had to terrorize someone who was already traumatized—and, volunteer or no, there would be added trauma—or he would have to hope for a fatal wounding and the opportunity to cast himself, yet again, as an angel of mercy. 

His body needed it. His soul quailed at the idea of facing that option again.

She hated like hell that she, with all her vaunted healing ability, could not be enough for him. “We’ve got to figure something out for you.”

His answer was immediate. “I’ll do, Buffy.”

She could push, but the way he looked… 

He really, really didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t even want to think about it. Which sucked, because the tension in him was setting her blood to jangling in her veins, which was going to be, had already proved to be, way distracting in a fight. 

Having such a super-intensified blood-bond was crazy, by the way. It had never occurred to her how much more aware she could become of a person—of their presence, of their moods—just by renewing the bite every three or so days, but, just, damn. She swore she could literally point to right where he was in any part of the hotel at any given time, like she was a Spike-compass. She could smell him and know how he was _feeling_—which would be decidedly creepy if it didn’t at least make her feel like he didn’t have such a stupid edge over her anymore with his idiotic vampire senses—and the prickles at the back of her neck? The Slayer-sense that screamed ‘OMG, _Vampire!_ Fight!’ had always been more of a full-body tingle-thing around older vamps like Spike and Angel, much less ancient ones like Drac and Kakistos and the Master, where it was overwhelming, made it hard for her to think, easier for them to distract her, thrall her if they had that capacity. 

But now… When you added in the bond, it was like being plunged into a profound, beyond-physical awareness of Spike that was on a level past innate. The feel of him the way it was now so completely out-competed the inborn Slayer instinct that she no longer experienced that edginess that said _‘Fight!’_ when he was near. She just felt… aroused. Which, yeah; originally her brain had long since translated ‘Fight!’ to ‘fight-means-fuck’ with him, and later, more specifically, _‘Spike!_ means fighter means back is safe (plus also still urge to fuck, always there, okay?)’… and yeah. Her Slayer-sense had long since become completely and utterly confused about him. Now, though, with the blood-bond involved, the tingles awash along her spine and limbs chanted arousal, while her entire being otherwise chanted that he was a _part_ of her. That she was a part of him; the way the old bond with Angel had done; but in all mixed in with that completely physical sense of Spike that she had never developed with Angel, because… Well, probably for obvious reasons. And now…

Now when she was anywhere remotely close to Spike it was ‘arousal-life-partofme-partofhim-godneedtoshowit-safealwayssafe’… and when he wasn’t nearby it became ‘got to get close; too far away from arousal-life-partofme-partofhim-safe-toofaraway’.

Which, yeah. Kind of drove her insane, sometimes. Made her feel super codependent, and reminded her way too much of the way she had felt at first when Angel leaving had torn her to pieces. /And now we know why that had hurt so bad; and we’d only had sex the one time!/ But at the same time… She wouldn’t trade it. Not when she could feel when Spike was safe. Feel when he was calm or anxious. Feel if he was okay or not. Even if it was invasive that he could do the same… because it wasn’t like it was anything new that that damn vampire could read her like a stupid book. 

At least having a bead on him had given her a leg up so she could compete in the ‘reading each other’ Olympics.

He was super-stressed lately, which didn’t help with the whole not eating enough thing. The whole thing with Illyria, she thought, wasn’t helping much, for one thing, since he had to spend so much time hiding that the demigod demon was, like, basically falling apart. She was reportedly doing weird little time-skips here and there now, sending people into brief jaunts into their pasts and futures on a regular basis so that everyone was basically avoiding her for the most part. The Old One therefore spent most of her time isolated up in her suite cooing over her mummified ex-Wesley and a bunch of dried-out ferns, and/or turning into Fred on the regular when she did have company. 

Spike had come back downstairs to where Buffy was doing a supply inventory one day actually fuming, so flipped out she’d had to pull him aside to get the full story. It had finally come to light, after some serious interrogation, that his co-ruler had sent him back into some ruffle-shirted moment in his childhood when he’d been at a funeral, crying on his mother’s lap or something, which… Well. Buffy didn’t really blame him for being pissed off about such an unwelcome blast from the past.

It was all deeply unsettling stuff, for more than one reason. Illyria was their big trump card keeping the other demon lords from invading or whatever, and maybe it was even Buffy’s fault, since she was (more or less) a human (or at least smelled like one, or thought like one or whatever was the blue woman’s ish), and she was basically around all the time with Spike invading the demons-only bubble and covering Spike with her scent or something. Spike was able to spend less and less of what, they both knew, counted as down-time for him, outside patrolling for survivors with her, because he had to spend so much time babysitting “The Azure Queen” and trying to nudge her back into full demon-Old One mode.

He had even taken to sponge-bathing first before going to hang with Illyria, so he didn’t smell all Buffied up, since apparently that got Illyria all hot and bothered, and just, why did this all have to be so complicated? It really was a rotten fly in the ointment of what, otherwise, was almost like a neat little vacation from their lives. /And yes, I do not miss how ironic it is that I am, overall, actually enjoying living in hell with my vampire boo. And no, I am not going to admit that to Dawn, much less Giles or Xander, if I ever get out of this mess./

She really was starting to wonder about herself, though, because if she did not actually really have some serious demon in her, then all indications were she was just a total adrenaline junkie at this point. /One more point for Faith’s side, dammit./ Though how much of that was her almost fighting to feel some of that same drive, here, that she had felt in fights in their own world, and wouldn’t it be doubly ironic if being in a demon dimension affected her so that it brought out more of her human side than her demon essence or whatever, made her what she had used to wish she could be back home?

God, that whole thing was a mess. If they ever _did_ get out of here, she was going to have to drag Spike over to St. Petersburg, wasn’t she, to confront Giles once and for all about the true nature of the Slayer line. Just, ugh. That all sounded really painful and hurty and just… She was really, really tired of Giles letting her down. She felt a world of denial over the thought of dealing with that little conversation, but she supposed that had never stopped these things from coming down the pike. She would face it when it came and deal with it then.

/No wonder I’m happier in hell right now. At least here I don’t have to face crap like disappointing father-figures and a bunch of metaphysical questions about whether I’m a wolfy sheepdog who really, really likes boning the wolves. Because, you know, once you _start_ boning the wolves, then you start getting all sympathetic about wolfy natures, and it makes questions about sheep-tending kind of muddy. Which is probably why the Watchers Council really, really went out of their way to keep their sheepdogs from getting too cozy with said wolves. You don’t get to know ‘em too well when you’re trained from the start to just stick to killing ‘em, so you don’t find out that they really flip your switch. Keep ‘em young and tearing out throats before the wolves can talk back, and let ‘em die in the fight before they really learn that their libidos lean toward…/

As they walked, Spike’s cool right hand drifted up along her overwarm left arm; a slow, unconscious caress that tickled lightly along her tricep, then back down to find her matching burn scar. Folded into her hand, stilling the automatic shivers his touch had always produced; a shudder once brought on by ironic heat chasing away ironic cold, and which was now merely… them. 

/Well, the Watchers were all always pretty much stuffed-shirt pricks anyway./ Not for the first time, Buffy found herself profoundly grateful that the assholes had not gotten to her in time to isolate her and turn her into some mindless killing machine the way they had done with Kendra. She knew her life had been tough, filled with a lot of DIY issues; and she had missed a bunch of perks, like living off of some kind of Watcher stipend—because really, that would have come in so handy after she’d come back from the dead—but no way she would have given up her autonomy, her freedom of thought, her rebel of a Watcher (no matter how that had turned out), her friends (ditto), her mother (God, _Mom_), and, eventually, sister (so hard not to worry about Dawn). And really, she had gotten more out of the bargain than, say, Faith, so…

Her eyes lifted to Spike, thought of her other loves. Of Angel, and how maybe, just maybe, that past love had been, in a way, but a primer for how to love a vampire, if she could just eventually let go of all the misinformation she had somehow picked up along the way about how vampires were supposed to work, and how they felt. How they loved, or not. Because… /I wouldn’t give it up. Any of it, if it meant giving up myself. Giving up _you_. Giving up _this_./

He caught the squeeze of her hand, the intensity of her gaze, and turned back to lift a scarred brow at her. “What’s up, pet?”

“Nothing,” she answered quietly. “I’m just really glad to be here, with you.”

A slow, pleased, genuine smile crossed his mobile lips. “Yeah?” The smile slid into a grin, chasing away the shadows. “Ta, luv. Same goes.”

They rounded the long line of bungalows at the far end of the grounds, listening already for the ever-present, painful music of pursuit and death, and exited the edges of Spike and Illyria’s carefully-held main territory. From here on out they would be on contested ground, though technically all of Beverly Hills belonged to the vampire and the Old One. 

As ever, here on the verge, they paused, and Spike sampled the air, nostrils flaring. A quick check for nearby humanity-in-distress. Excellent use of hunting skills, now warped and reshaped to accommodate current rescue-tactics, and was it possible for her to be prouder of her guy than she had been before? She kept thinking he’d topped himself, and then he’d do something like this. He was freaking starving, but still, he would willingly torture himself with this. Eyes closed, using every sense to save people. 

“This way.”

They struck off to the southeast, and she couldn’t help but squeeze his hand, because his face looked even more drawn now, and he was just… She was torn. Half of her wanted to cry, leap on him, hug him to death. Half of her wanted to put a medal on him or something. Hang his picture on the wall of the hotel in the empty little museum among the rest of the visiting celebrities, with a plaque that said ‘hero’. A leader, part of the history of this place now; as much as anybody who had ever stayed in these bungalows. And he didn’t even have his picture up anywhere like the famous actors did.

/God. Once upon a time I told him he was dumb for expecting kudos for not taking even, like, a lick of wasted blood from people who were bleeding freely all over the floor, like a total bitch, when what it must’ve _done_ to him… Jesus, Buffy, he was _starving_, just like now, and…/ 

“Useful,” she managed, through a tight throat, because he wouldn’t want her to thank him for the self-sacrifice.

He flashed her a quick, tight grin before turning back to their line of march. He looked determined, implacable. 

/I love you so much sometimes I feel like I’m gonna die from it./

As always before they slipped between the last two buildings, Buffy touched the corner of the Marilyn Monroe cottage in silent homage. These bungalows were history, torn now from the world. It was one of the great tragedies of this whole Hell-A thing that they had been ravaged by demonic forces. 

Little private suites that had been occupied by people like Marilyn, Howard Hughes, and Rita Hayworth, had been taken over by various members of Spike’s little retinue. They now disported themselves in the iconic rooms where Hollywood royalty had once stayed. Even more blasphemous, in Buffy’s mind… all of the gorgeous dresses once on display in the hotel museum—dresses that had been worn by movie stars over the last century, priceless silver screen artifacts, diamond necklaces and earrings and studded evening gowns—had been pillaged by his demon women and turned into their own private dress-up game. They were gone forever. If this hell was ever fixed, there were damages that could never be repaired; pieces of history that could never be replaced.

It might really count as nothing when you looked into the eyes of the children they rescued and saw the horrors there, but it still counted on the scales, for her. Made her feel doubly guilty every day when she lay in Spike’s arms or fought at his side and felt actual peace in this godawful dimension, because, what the hell was _wrong_ with her? And yet… that was all and everything that made her believe it would somehow all balance out. Because sometimes when she looked into Spike’s eyes just glowing into her own, she felt like everything was going to be okay somehow. She knew it sounded dumb, and probably it was just chemistry—blood-bond chemistry chanting at her that everything was wonderful as long as she had her vampire here, close by. Just drugs, and she should be wary, she should be concerned about her own ridiculous calm—but it was hard to think like that. Everything was going so crazy well with them that it scared her. She had almost given up waiting for the other shoe to drop between them, which she knew was super dangerous… but she had kind of stopped fearing their next fight, even. 

She knew that it would no longer shake them. Which was as mind-blowing a revelation as she had ever had in her life, to realize that she could fight with Spike, and… it wouldn’t change anything. 

Nothing would change. Not anymore. As long as they got to be by each other sides, this was it. They were done. No more flames. No more dust. No more ashes.

No more cold.

They were alive… and they were together. Fighting as one.

“Heads up, Slayer.”

She jerked around in time to see the Vorgun loping up toward a little huddle of terrified humans like a hairy, open-mouthed case of incoming doom. 

She limbered up her axe. “Sorry. Was woolgathering.”

“Must’ve been some trip.” Spike was already advancing, eyes glancing back periodically to her side of their duo, feeling her out.

She pulled up even and spread out a little to afford him combat space. This one was going to take a concerted attack from both sides. It was a big bastard. Lucky there was only one, and not a whole pack like the other night.

She hated the ones that split them up. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

All told, they made pretty short work of the lone Vorgun. They were really very stupid things, especially like this; starving and alone. It was a pack-hunter native to this dimension, and never did very well without backup. Probably it had thought the squishy little troop of humans would be easy pickings, though once it had identified the incoming half-demon and—well, who knew what it had thought Buffy to be. All bets were apparently still off, there—it had swung round to engage the more formidable, armed threat first, leaving the snacks till later. 

It had been as surprised as they were when, while they were still at work with their axes, two of the more enterprising (or maybe the more traumatized) of the humans started screaming and, picking up some kind of clubs or something, leapt into the fray and began to whale on the back of the thing. 

It had, of course, whirled around to go after the things banging on its ass. Which had perforce necessitated a change in tactics, since she and Spike couldn’t exactly just keep right on swinging. They might have accidentally maimed the civilians. 

Stupid, courageous civvies.

In the end, the woman with the longer branch had come out without much more than a couple of scratches from the thing’s long, spiny growths. The man had a big rip, though, in his bicep, the dufus, which necessitated a longer stopover out in the stupid open while Buffy went through her limited First Aid supplies seeking something to use to stop the bleeding. Which was really just awfully profuse, and God, was she going to have to figure out how to make a tourniquet? Did she even remember how to make one of those? 

Panic fluttered at the back of her mind as she fought to recall long-ago memories of health class and pictures in a book while her fingers scrabbled on the ground for a small stick to twist in the makeshift bandage and she tried really hard not to remember another time when she couldn’t remember First Aid and CPR and there was a cold face under her hands and cold lips and no breath and…

/Don’t think. Not about how it probably doesn’t matter if he dies, because we don’t have a surgeon to fix it if it’s torn, and he might lose the arm if we just keep the thing on. Don’t think about how many you’ve lost and about how you can’t save them all. Think about now. Right now you just have to find…/

“It didn’t get the artery. Nor yet any veins.” Standing back a little, Spike uttered his pronouncement flatly enough that it jerked her out of her autonomic shuffle. 

“Wh… Are you sure?” Which was, she knew the moment she said it, the dumbest thing in the world to ask a vampire, and was she really questioning him, of all people, about blood loss? “Sorry, I just…” 

His lips twitched a little, wryly, at her acknowledgment. “If it got a major vessel the blood’d be spurting out with his heartbeat, innit?” He pointed with his chin at the pad of bandage she was pressing with automatic fierceness over the top of the wound. “It’s bled out enough to be clean of the thing’s saliva. Wrap it up tight before the blighter goes faint on us, and I’ll carry him out.”

She complied blindly, her panic slowly began to subside in relief. And turned back as the import of his words began to sink in. “Spike, are you sure you’re…” The fight may have been easier than it could have been, but he had gotten a few nicks himself, and he had that red tinge about his eyes. He had thinned out again in the last day or so, and he was too pale. 

She was in no way concerned about his losing control. She just didn’t want him to put himself through the torture.

His eyes on hers were steady, though. “You need your hands free, luv, in case our friend there has neighbors.” And, as if proving something to her, he leaned over to sling the man’s good arm over his shoulder—though she saw his nostrils flare at the scent of fresh blood, he stood stoic as he took gentle hold of the damaged human and settled his grip, straightened. “I’ll do.”

His muscles were quivering, though, he held them so taut. She could see them; in his arms, in his belly, under his shirt. Certainly not from effort, though god knew he had to be relatively low on energy. Even at his lowest he could still block some of her best punches or throw her across the room, and had done, more than once in the past, though he tired easily and certainly was not at his best speed… and god, he needed to eat.

Held across his filthy chest, the man’s mangled arm twitched, and trickle of blood escaped the hastily-contrived pressure-bandage to slither down the front of Spike’s shirt. And the link between them rocked with a pained, hollow feeling that made Buffy’s stomach clench in desperate sympathy. “Can we go now?” Spike hissed, and Buffy could swear she saw the red circles deepen around his eyes, his skin grow paler and his cheekbones hollow in that very instant, though he did not so much as wet his lips.

She closed her eyes briefly to stop herself from embarrassing him. He did not want her to go marching over there and rip the guy out of his arms. He said he could handle it and he would. 

All she had to do was ignore the heavy tattoo of his suffering as it beat through the blood-bond; the way it made her own stomach churn with the awareness of his dreadful, starving hunger and the way the demon inside him literally _screamed_ at him to feed.

Right. Easy enough. Just keep your mind on business, and not on the vampire back there being a stubborn, bullheaded, idiotic… hero. “Okay, on your feet, folks. I know you’re tired and scared, but we’re actually pretty close to a place where you can be safe and rest.” 

The people hovering around the site of the makeshift hospital drama shifted, moved to rise. They all seemed more than a little shell-shocked. Understandably, she supposed, considering the idea of safety probably sounded like a fairy tale after a month in Hell-A running from who knew how many types of man-eating demons and rapey who-knew-whats and scavenging for water and food and…

Spike was losing his patience. “You heard the lady,” he grated. Time to move out, folks, before all this blood brings us any extra visitors, yeah?” 

Something in his voice seemed to scare their anxious little audience into action. Maybe it was the underlying note of starving demon that set their innate faculties buzzing into fight-or-flight, which… good on them. If they had survived this long in hell, they must have developed _some_ instincts, right?

Falling in automatically to the sound of reason, coming as it did from one of the strange duo who had saved their butts, the half-dozen or so people they’d netted came to their feet and settled in uneasily behind Buffy, with much shuffling of feet and clearing of throats. She eyed them for a moment and then sighed. “Alright. I’ve got point. You.” And she pointed with her bloody axe at the woman who had jumped in on the fight, who was still clutching her branch like it was a sword or something. “Hang back with Spike and help watch our rear. If anything comes up behind us you’ll switch with me and lead the party due southeast...” She slung the axe out, dripping, in the direction of the weirdly-out-of-place, bizarrely tandem moon and sun. “When you see the big huddle of pinkish buildings that looks like a mission, that’s our objective. Got it? I’ll hang back and guard the rear if we’re attacked.”

The woman looked thoroughly anxious to be thus called upon, but then she glanced down at the kid attached to her hand; a boy of about eleven who was clearly doing his best to look older than he was and like he didn’t need the help… but he wasn’t letting go of his mother, either. As she did so, an expression Buffy recognized crossed her face. It was that same sheer determination that had lit her own heart when Dawn had been in danger and she had had to choose. Fight, even die, or let whatever it was hurt her baby girl. 

And that would never happen.

This woman would get these people to safety if it killed her. Because her kid was part of the group. The end.

They struck out wordlessly for the hotel, Spike with the moaning guy bleeding in his arms, his expression as set and wordless as she had ever seen it. He was going to see this through if it killed them both. 

She didn’t even want to know how hard this was on him.

Thank God it wasn’t too far of a hike. The ambush had happened no more than a half-mile from the bungalows, and they had the area pretty well cleaned out so close to the hotel, so luckily nothing else attacked, either.

Which, to be real, begged the question. “Where were you guys headed?” Buffy asked, making conversation if only to keep their spirits up on the march.

“We heard… somewhere up here in this area was… a safe place.” Her backup rearguard chick was the one who spoke up. She sounded tired beyond belief; like someone who had no hope left but the vaguest prayer that the faintest rumor might be real. She glanced down toward the filthy child at her side, still clinging to her hand, like he was her reason for living. “Don’t know if it’s here or just if someone up here helps you find it, but it’s all we have, so…”

She exchanged quick glances with Spike, concerned. It was possibly not of the good that word was getting around. It could be helpful if it was only spreading among the humans, since it wasn’t like demons tended to talk to their food before they ate it. All in all that would actually cut down on the work for them, if the herds of humanity started literally coming to them. 

On the other hand, if the other demon lords actually started getting wind of human refugees thinking of Beverly Hills as a ‘safe zone’, Spike and Illyria’s little cover story would get blown really damn fast. 

Depending on what some of their more demon-y rescues might say about the rumor-mill, some serious damage control might be in order, like, soon.

Speaking of demon-rescues, on the way back they picked up one seriously terrified-looking loose-skinned demon who just broke Buffy’s heart, because she really looked like she could be Clem’s niece or something. She was so scared she could barely walk, kept tripping over her own thigh-skin. Buffy ended up practically carrying her, too, for that last few hundred yards, and the fact that _she_ was so close to safety really begged the question of how much news was getting out, and to whom.

They made a motley crew as they made their way through the eerie cacophony of orange sunset to trail back onto hotel grounds. Nothing new about that, of course, and practice made maneuvers easier as they nudged their little troupe of footsore civilians into the east wing of the Pink Palace and settled them into the Polo Private Room with its mellow wood paneling and white-pillared doorways and green carpets, all overlooking the spacious—if denuded—grounds through wide, curtained windows. The calm, warm atmosphere of the room had had the effect on previous groups of settling down even the most anxious refugee… and there was enough space to lay people out on what was a relatively soft surface for triage. 

Their more trusted demons—the ones who had stayed on instead of moving on to the safehouse, and some of the girls who were better with humans—knew to be on watch for their returns from these forays, and swept in as soon as they entered to get to work offering food, water, to start on the First Aid. Buffy had to admit feeling a little let down that no one in this group appeared to be on the brink of death. It was a guilty feeling, but real, because even their bleeder, once Spike had gratefully relinquished him to a couple of attendants and stepped aside, was looking a little less wilted under their ministrations. Which, you know, was good and everything from a numbers point of view, but…

God, she needed to get her guy fed. 

She was really worried about him. Worried about his protracted stare at the bandaged arm, still seeping blood. At the way he brushed at his damp shirt, blood still on it; repeatedly now, as if he had no idea he was still doing it, the stain wet on the backs of his fingers. He was biting his lip, and…

The crew was trailing out now. In a few moments they would be replaced by what they called, tongue-in-cheek, the concierge group; a few of the girls who were specifically good at slotting people into available spaces, where they remain until the Beverly Hills contingent could collect enough of a party to make it worth Conner’s while to guide them over to the safehouse. This made it a good time. Less witnesses among the staff, as it were. 

Of course she could go room to room and ask around, but it would seem weird. She didn’t know any of them, and the last bunch had just been sent off with Conner. Who knew when they’d get another party in, and Spike needed something now. He’d never negotiate for himself…

Best to do it all at once. It would save time.

She was stepping forward before she even knew she had made a decision. Certainly before Spike could realize what she was about to do and stop her. “People, could I have your attention before you go?”

The refugees, looking calm and a lot better off than they had when they first entered the room, glanced up at her with varying degrees of wariness and trust. Here went nothing. “You’ve all got rooms waiting for you. You can let the staff here know if you have preferences to bunk together or whatever. We don’t know what kind of relationships anyone has built out here. But before you go… I need to make a request.”

“Buffy.” Spike’s one word carried a vast weight of limits and remonstrance.

And, for the first time since she had come here to join him, she flat-out ignored him. 

They would fight about this later. Especially since she was, right now, overriding him in public. But ‘in front of the humans’ didn’t so much count, in her mind, as the same kind of ‘in public’ as ‘in front of the court’… and he couldn’t go on like this. Not and keep on with what he needed to do; in actual public, for all of them. “If any of you are feeling particularly strong, and are willing to offer an exchange, Spike here is in need of assistance...”

**TBC**  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Well, she made it two weeks without stepping all over his toes... and they made it two weeks without a fight. And better if it's about her taking care of him than for some other reason?  
  
The fight, I promise, is (one hopes) sexy as hell, when we get to it. Because, Spuffy. ****  
  
  



	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... here we go. Will Spike get fed? Will Buffy actually, you know, negotiate that sort of thing for her vampire? How many other ways can things go topsy-turvy in hell? 
> 
> Ready for another shot through the looking-glass?   
Strap in for some blood-drinkin', Spuffy-smackdownin', smutty good fun! Whoop-whoop!

Spike was pissed. Buffy could feel his frustration rising behind her into a sudden, growling rage, and okay, fine. She could match his mad, later, in private. /But you know what? You can _not_ show weakness till you dwindle away to nothing, you idiot, but this is the only way, and you _know_ it!/ 

To her complete lack of surprise it was the woman with the preteen son who spoke up. “What do you mean, assistance?” she asked, glancing at their pale rescuer out of the corner of her eye. Her gaze darted back to Buffy’s, curious and uncertain but willing to speak up, at least. 

No one else was even daring to open their mouths, so Buffy addressed the woman dead on. “Don’t get scared, but Spike’s a vampire. A good one,” she hurriedly amended when the woman instantly blanched and made to draw back, pulling her son against her body. Tried to ignore the fact that this was probably the first time in their entire association that her lover was too livid to snort out a disclaimer or a rebuttal or to try to blurt out some of his, ‘I so am _not_, I’m _evil!’_ credentials. 

He might actually try to strangle her for this, later, upstairs. 

If she had her way, he’d be as close as possible to full strength again when they threw down over this. “Back home he lived off of hospital blood and stuff from the butcher's, but we all know that’s out, here…”

“If the hospital was working I’d be living in that damn place,” one of the guys in the back of the group muttered grimly. “Sure wouldn’t be in a freakshow like this. Damn vampires, green women like on ‘Star Trek’, crazy monsters…”

The little Loose-Skinned demon sort of huddled in on herself in the corner, poor kid.

Buffy ignored the guy. “The thing is… if he was one of the bad ones, he’d be fine here. But since he’s not… he’s starving. And we haven’t been able to find a solution for that…”

“Buffy…” Spike’s voice was literally shaking with a combination of balls-out rage and world of flat pleading; begging for her to stop. 

But it was too late. “You want one of us… to let him…” The woman was no dummy. She had cottoned on before anyone else in the group, and was staring in stunned incredulity. 

“Just a little. If any of you are willing. Like a blood donation, you know?” When she paled, Buffy shrugged. “I’d say we’d offer to do it, you know, with needles and all that, but we don’t have any of that stuff…”

Behind her, Spike sat down abruptly and heavily in the nearest chair and dropped his head into his hands as if her negotiations on his behalf had drained him of any remaining will to live or something. /I’m so sorry, Spike. I’m not trying to, whatever. Emasculate you or take your choices away, but… God. _You_ aren’t doing anything about it, and I can’t _stand_ this anymore!/

There was a short silence from the crowd, then… “Are you seriously asking for _payment_ for saving us?” a guy in the back demanded harshly.

Buffy shook her head immediately. “No. Not at all. I’m asking for volunteers, because a person I care about who has helped a lot of people and will continue to help a lot more is literally starving to death while doing it… and I can’t stand to watch it anymore.” /And I love him. Please. I _love_ him./

The group digested that for a moment, and then, to her surprise, the kid stepped forward, if only as far as his mother’s grip allowed. Her hand tightened involuntarily on his wrist as he did so, trying to pull him back, but he only tilted his head with interest, eyes on Spike. “Are you really a vampire?”

/Oh wow. Why is it always the kids?/

Spike roused briefly from his black study to eye the boy with a gaze clouded with pain; like a patch of blue sky covered in storm clouds. “Yeah. Have been for a bloody century and more.” And he shot Buffy a look that was one of the more venomous he had ever directed toward her, if tempered by a vast weariness. “Been through droughts before, will do again. Survived ‘em all, too.”

/So sue me if I care./

The kid shot his mother a glance, looked back at Spike in clear fascination. “Can I see your teeth?”

Spike sighed heavily and tilted his head back on his neck to view the onlookers from under his hooded eyelids. It was clear he was hoping in this moment that showing his game face would scare off any takers. “Yeah. Sure. Why the hell not?” And without further ado he vamped out.

A couple of the jumpier refugees took a few steps back. Most of them did double-takes, or at least gasped involuntarily, including mom. But the kid? He just looked inspired. “Wow. Cool! And if one of us let you drink our blood, you’d feel better?”

“Oh, bloody hell.” Dropping his miserably feral countenance back into his hands, Spike shook his head grimly. “My body might, lad, but my soul wouldn’t, yeah?”

The kid looked confused. “But, if it’s just a donation, and you’re a good vampire, you’re not going to kill anyone if you do it, right?”

He had a remarkable grasp of the situation. A far better one, honestly, than Buffy had had for the past, oh, damn near ten years. /There’s something to be said for coming at the world without prejudice./ But then, this was a kid who had probably already been faced any number of demon-beasties. In his eyes, Spike was no doubt some kind of toothy teddy bear in comparison, and familiar as a tiger or something you’d see in a zoo. Your standard storybook monster, after a month of facing the really real thing. 

She glanced back at her guy, and was concerned to see his shoulders shaking. God, was he…

Then she heard the dark chuckle. “Yeah. I’m a bloody saint of a vamp. That’s me. Everyone’s safe as houses. Go tell everyone…”

/Oh for fuck’s sake./ “Spike, stop it. No one else is even in here.” She turned back to the crowd. “Again, this is entirely voluntary, so if you guys want to sleep on it, think about it, we’d be really grateful…”

“I don’t need to think about it,” the boy interrupted. “I’ll do it.”

Spike was on his feet in an instant, backing away before even the mother could gasp out her denials. “Sodding _hell_ no!”

“Dustin, _no!_ Are you _kidding_ me?”

“Why not, Mom? He and her saved us, and they’re helping us get somewhere even safer, and he needs this. He can’t eat anything else, and I’m pretty healthy! They’ll make sure to give us snacks after, and remember? I gave that blood when cousin Gina was in the hospital…”

“They let you give like an ounce, and even that made you woozy! There’s no way I’m gonna let…”

Spike had controlled himself with an effort, was back in his human guise as he knelt a careful six feet away—no doubt to avoid alarming the mother—in order to interrupt her with the quiet grace he saved for children. “Your mum’s right, Dustin. You don’t have enough blood in your body to give me what I need without me doin’ you harm. But you’re a right brave lad and I want you to know how much I appreciate the offer, yeah? Thank you.”

Dustin actually looked crushed. “But I wanna help.”

Spike shook his head and started to rise, if slowly. “You already have. I’ll be fine.”

Buffy watched his chances for survival slowly circling the drain, fists clenched so hard that her fingernails punched holes in her palms. She would not interfere. Would not ask them again. If none of them volunteered—if none of them could be as brave as an eleven, twelve-year-old kid—then to hell with all of them!

Spike was moving so slowly now, so wearily, that she could only turn away a little, fighting down the lump in her throat. What if…

“You can have me.”

Buffy whirled back, staring. It was the mother’s voice. She had stepped forward, still clinging hard to her son’s wrist to hold him to her side. Her face was pale but set, eyes wide but firm on Spike. Buffy opened her mouth, awed and feeling the stirrings of hope inside her for the first time in she didn’t know how long… but Spike beat her to the punch. “Beg pardon, mum?”

"I said…” She lifted her chin a little, looking like she was working hard at turning whim into determination. “You can have… what you need from me. Since you… wouldn’t take it from my son. Which shows me that you… are a man of honor. Because I can tell you’re…” She swallowed. “You really are pretty desperate. And you did save us. And you carried that man all the way here, and he was bleeding on you, and you didn’t… do anything to him. So I’m going to trust you that you’ll… stop. Before you hurt me. Because you know I have a child.”

Buffy saw the tremor run through his body. Saw the pain and the relief of it in the way he ran his shaking left hand through his hair, messing it up a little. “I… What’s your name, mum?”

She looked startled at that. “My…” She seemed a little confused by the question. “Uh, Joan.”

He jerked, eyes flashing briefly to Buffy’s before jerking away just shy of meeting her startled glance. “Joan,” he began, very formally. “I can’t say I’m glad that you volunteered, but… I’m very grateful. Because I’m not in a position to say no.” It was the first time Buffy had ever heard Spike speak in quite that way before; in tones that, slowed down and less clipped, sounded almost…

Almost like Giles, and wow. Was that what William had sounded like, once upon a time? 

Clearly he was really, really moved by this woman’s sacrifice. And just as clearly, he deeply did not want to have to do this. Especially not in front of an audience composed of her son, and, just…

But if he was going to do it again someday—and if he was going to survive this place, he would _need_ to do it again someday—then they would need witnesses. Witnesses to attest that he didn’t harm her. Witnesses that everything had gone well. And Spike knew that as well as Buffy did, for he in no way asked anyone to leave, or be shuffled off to their rooms… and jeez. For him this must almost feel like fucking in public, with an audience…

And, oh man. It just occurred to Buffy right in that moment that… How bad was this going to hurt Joan? Because without the sex part, was he going to be able to make it feel any less than painful? Or…

/God, is he going to… Can you thrall people, Spike?/ Did he even know how? She’d never asked. Though, if he did, why he’d never tried it on her in his more desperate days as a way to win her over was beyond her.

“Could… one of you blokes, ah, walk over to the side a bit with Dustin, please?” he asked, and his voice was a rusty, hoarse, as if he hadn’t used it in a very long time. 

“Go ahead, baby. Go with Ricki. Over there, to the other side of the room. I don’t want you to watch…” 

“But I _wanna_ watch, Mom…”

“Don’t! Don’t _argue_ with me, Dustin! Just… go, okay?”

“Aw, man…”

“C’mon, Dusty, let’s just…” Ricki caught him by the shoulder and tugged him away, eyeing Spike warily and looking completely dubious about all of this.

“Oh, Jesus,” the complainer from earlier groaned. “Don’t do it, Joan; seriously…”

Buffy really kind of wanted to get him out of here. That, or gag him. Joan ignored him though, eyes on Spike. “Will it hurt?”

Spike sighed heavily and squatted in front of her, much as he had done when talking to her son. “I’ll be as gentle about it as I know how to be, mum. You have my word on that. And… To be honest, there are some blighters as pay for the privilege, back where we all come from… so it can feel good. Same as some folks get to likin’ the feeling of gettin’ a tattoo or a piercing an’ that, yeah? Dunno how you are with that sort of thing, but… I’ll do my best to make it tolerable for you.”

Buffy supposed that could have sent it either way. Their subject could have fled for the hills right then, depending on how she felt about needles and stuff like that. But they must have gotten a winner, for Joan looked, if anything, a little thoughtful as she lifted her arm, pushed up one tattered sleeve to reveal a tattoo across the back of one bony wrist. Ran two forefingers over the faded pattern of leaves and some smudged lettering. “Have three tattoos. Would have gotten more, but after Dusty…” She shrugged, her entire pose seeming to relax a hair. “I felt kind of like it was… weird to keep getting ‘em, now I’m a mom. But I still get the itch sometimes. And getting poked never bugged me the way it bugs some people, so…” When she turned her gaze back to Spike she was now clear-eyed and as ready as she would ever be. “Am I gonna get hooked on this?” she asked candidly.

/She’s not dumb/ Buffy thought grimly. /Just don’t get hooked on my guy, ‘cause he’s the only vamp around handing out bites that don’t come with the fatal… and you’re not gonna be in Beverly Hills that long./ Picking up a bitee addiction here in Hell-A might end with a very quick case of dead, whereas back in good old LA it might just end with a case of perma-anemia. 

“I’ll try to keep it… impersonal,” Spike answered quietly. Buffy had to admit he was doing an admirable job of that so far, what with his whole hands-off approach. God knew he had to be dying for a nip by now, what with a willing person on offer who was reasonably attractive, not wounded or smelling like death, relatively decently-nourished… And yet here he was, finding the delicate balance between grr and pleasant. Being practically gentlemanly, so as not to scare off the donor, without turning on too much of the ridiculous charm she knew he had in abundance and which would make the experience really just A-OK for Joan here—hell, they both knew he could quite easily make the woman forget her own name doing this, probably without even skirting too far over the boundaries into the land of cheating—but he also didn’t want to make enough of an impression to end up with yet another woman dangling off his butt at every turn, either. Much less one with an eleven-year-old kid in tow who was already infatuated with vamps.

Buffy had to admit that she hadn’t thought of the whole blood-ho wrinkle, though. What if they found some feeder people for Spike who couldn’t get enough, wouldn’t leave him alone… /Or, you know, what if someone developed a one-sided blood-bond with him and got all… moony? Or does it even work that way if there’s no sex? Or is it all about _his_ intent when he does it, or…/

Too many unknowns, and she winced, clenching her fingers tighter into her palms. /You ask him, later, how it works. And then you deal. Because these are the perils of keeping your vamp fed, Buffy, so _deal_ with it. You either navigate the deep, swirly waters of jealousy, or you help him cope with becoming a killer again… or he starves./ And since she knew neither of them could handle options B or C…

Option A it was. 

“So… How do you want to, um, do this?” Joan asked almost conversationally, but with nervousness showing through her voice and with jitters in her hands. 

Moment of truth. Spike exhaled uselessly and, with a nod, pushed himself to his feet and made a gesture that could almost be classified as courtly, in the direction of the nearest chair. “Probably best if I do it from behind, so you don’t have to look at me, yeah?”

/So, obviously no thralling up in here, then./ Buffy wasn’t sure why that made her feel so much better. 

Joan gave a little shudder as she headed in the direction indicated. “Do you, um, have to make that… face?”

Buffy held in the snort with considerable effort. /If he wants the teeth to work, yeah./ The amount of facial infrastructure required to support the entire bloodletting process was kind of profound. Actually, the whole vampire anatomy thing was one of the few parts of her ‘Vampyre’ lessons she had really paid attention to in her less dedicated high school years. She was glad of it now, of course, since all those anatomy lessons had paid off in the end… if in a rather more intimate fashion than she had ever imagined at fifteen or sixteen. 

She had been spurred on to much deeper research in the general vicinity of her seventeenth birthday. Had gone even further down said research rabbit-hole on that one subject when she was twenty. Giles would have been thoroughly impressed at how good a student she had become by that point, had he still been around. Of course, he would have been deeply disappointed at the reason behind her very anxious, personal motivations, but… There it was. 

“You won’t have to see it, mum,” Spike was saying as he stepped behind the chair, and he couldn’t help it now. As he slipped into game face he had begun to move like a predator; also very clearly he couldn’t look at Buffy. And in that moment she knew why he had chosen that particular chair for his donor. Because when he took what he needed, his back would also be to _her_. 

He would not have to see her watching him feed. 

She wanted to turn away, so deep was his shame over this. Badly wanted to give him that much privacy, though part of her was unsure why he needed it, now, at this point in their relationship. Was it because of the intimacy of an act that had become very much their own now being shared, perforce, with another? Or because he simply did not like her to see him doing this; this parody of the hunt, in her face while knowing that deep inside it still must trigger her instinct to stake him, save the woman in the chair? 

It didn’t though. Only on the deepest possible level did she feel the vamp-tingle, watching him move; when she saw him tilt and slide in that particular way that bespoke danger. But it was only from a place so primitive that she almost failed to notice it; in part because she trusted him utterly to control his thirst, and in part because… God. It was hard. Harder than she had thought it would be to watch him do this to someone else. And yes, she badly wanted him to do it. Badly needed him to, so he could be alright. 

But, oh my _God_, she wanted to punch through a _wall_ right now, it hurt so badly to know that she couldn’t give him enough to make this fucking unnecessary. 

Still, she couldn’t turn away. Not when she knew to do so would only be to confirm all of it to him. That she denied his basic right to live. To do what he needed to do to survive. That she felt he was wrong to do it. That she felt he was somehow cheating by taking what he needed. She wanted to watch, if it meant supporting him.

And yet, she had to somehow signal that by her watching she was not the Slayer right now, was not lying in wait to save him from himself. That she never once believed, on any level, that he was an evil predator who might slip up at any moment, or that she might need to jump in and relieve him of his access to this woman. 

So she did the one thing she could think of. She moved to one side… and took a seat. 

And felt him relax.

/Oh. Oh, _God_./ Had he really thought that she… /Oh, _Spike_. No matter how hungry you are, I know you’ll _never_…/ 

“I’m gonna move your hair, Joan,” he murmured now to the woman on the chair. Joan nodded, eyes closed and hands tightly clenched on her knees. 

“Think back to when you got your last tattoo, yeah? What it felt like. Think… what it’d feel like to get one here, on your neck.” His fingers rose to stroke along the vein, and Buffy shivered, knowing exactly how that cool touch would feel, caressing lightly along skin protecting vulnerable vessels, raising gooseflesh and calling the anxious blood to rush to the surface to the tune of a more rapidly-beating heart. 

“That’s right. Just there.” He would be smelling her adrenaline now, a helpless response to the presence of a predator sweet-talking her from behind her lizard-brain. His voice was becoming lower, more gravelly by the second, his lisp more and more pronounced as his fangs descended.

She saw him rake his nails a little harder over the area; dug her own nails deeper into her palms. She knew he was trying his best to make it okay for Joan, but… Goddamn it. She really was going to punch something after this was over. She needed a workout bag here, or…

“Just breathe, Joan, let the air flow in through your nose, out through your mouth. Remember the burn when the needle comes…”

Joan’s hands were flexing now, in tune to the low, hypnotic murmurs of a predatory vampire singing songs of surrender, and God, would he just do it and be done? It was like he was trying to work himself up to it or something.

It occurred to Buffy only then that that was exactly what he was trying to do, and a pang of almost perfect agony struck her heart. /Oh, Spike; oh God…/ 

“That’s right; just like that. Keep breathing…”

She could tell by the tone in his voice that he was reaching breaking point. Clenched her own fists so hard she was pretty sure she had just drawn blood. And heard Joan gasp, almost before she caught the movement of his head, dipping.

And then Joan’s hands were gripping her own thighs, just above the knee, and Spike was clinging to Joan’s shoulder with his left hand, the back of the chair with his right, and Buffy had to fight to control her own breathing, because she could _feel_ him. Feel the fight to control himself, his hand clamped so hard on the back of the chair that the upholstery ripped. Feel the surge of desperate need, of incredible, crystalline perfection. A sense of almost ragged lust; of bright satiety just out of reach… and a moment of decision. And then he was tearing himself away; turning, hunched and shuddering and incapable of anything other than holding himself statue-still so that he did not go back and finish. 

Shaking with him, Buffy forced herself to her feet. Went to Joan, because if she touched Spike right now… “Thank you,” she whispered quietly.

Joan was… Okay, Buffy really didn’t need to see that look in the woman’s face. Joan was kind of a mess right now. She had tears standing in her eyes, and her hand was pressed to her neck, but it was clear that she was also ten kinds of aroused, a fine tremor running all along her body. She shivered when Buffy entered her view, and her eyes, blinking away the moisture, unerringly found the marks Buffy never bothered to hide anymore just above the juncture of her own neck and shoulder. “Do you… Does he…” Then she seemed to shake herself. Swallowed hard and raggedly. And sagged against the chair, breathing hard. 

“I’ll make sure they get you some extra food and water. We might even be able to find you some reconstituted juice from the bar…” Buffy really couldn’t trust herself to speak to anything more than the necessary logistics right now. This woman had done her man a serious favor, and she would be charitable. And not think. Not even a little bit, about the price. 

“Can…” Joan shook herself. “I need a minute to get myself together,” she whispered. “Without Dustin.”

She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. “I’ll let the staff know.” She turned away before she could say or do anything she would regret. Kept her back to the woman until she could breathe again. “Thank you,” she managed again, softly. And walked to Spike without another word. 

He straightened when she approached, pulling himself together in much the same way as Joan had. “We should… get the concierge staff in here to tend to them…”

Buffy pulled in another deep breath, to steel herself. And took his arm. “We’ll send them in when we go out. C’mon.”

He was still avoiding looking at her. “Where’re we going?” His voice came out rough, taut.

“Upstairs.” She could literally smell his arousal. It was almost as strong as his guilt, written across him loud as the shouting lines of self-denigration and inward-turning rage.

He went without further comment, the staff entering at his nod to go about their regularly scheduled duties. They exited among the throng, made their way all the way upstairs without saying a word… and got to the other side of their suite door before Spike slammed it shut, hard and decisively enough to make her jump. And was in her face, raging, nostrils flaring, arms slammed out, palms flat, to either side of her head. “Bloody. Fucking. Christ, Buffy…”

“It worked, didn’t it?” she demanded, cutting him off ruthlessly, and slid a hand up to squeeze one already-healthier bicep. “You got fed.” If he thought he could shake her up doing this, after all their years of fighting as foreplay, he was straight-up stupid. Besides; right now he needed to get off a lot more than he needed to fight. He could yell at her later, or they could hit each other, or whatever. After. 

His eyes flashed on hers, a furious sapphire so dark they were almost black, and burning with need. Well. First things first. She moved her hands to his belt. 

And was more than a little surprised when he jerked away like she had burned him. “What the bloody fuck do you think you’re doing, you crazy bint?”

It stung her into words she’d probably avoid any other time. “What the hell do you think, you idiot? I’m finishing what you started downstairs!”

It was the wrong thing to say. He froze, eyes turning cold as ice… and punched the door so hard he put a hole in it before he stalked away. 

Okay, she supposed if he really wanted to fight first she could get down with that too. It appeared she had her own dumb things to scream into the world of the inevitable before they could get past this. Might as well get the hurting each other part over with before they moved on to the healing each other portion of festivities. “So, are we going to do this?” she asked his back, almost calmly.

“Do what, Buffy?” he breathed, and to her surprise he just sounded tired. He was standing a little across the room from her; head hanging down, looking defeated. “I’m so brassed off at you I can’t even…”

“And I’m mad to. Obviously that was no fun for me either…”

He whirled, all helpless rage once more. “Then why the bloody hell did you make me do it?” he roared.

“Because I don’t want you to waste away, you stupid asshole!” she shrieked back. “Because I fucking love you, okay?”

“Well, you have a really sodding hideous way of showing it, peddling me off to whatever bleeding wench comes along waving her neck about…”

/Oh, are you serious!/ “You incredible dick! You were _starving_ to death!”

“I could do for another month, easy…”

“You’re such a goddamn liar! You were barely holding on and you know it. I could knock you on your ass…”

“I’ll show you knock you on your…” He started for her. 

She laughed in his face. “Yeah. _Now_ you will. Now you’ve eaten. What the hell is _wrong_ with you? You’ve fed on me _how_ many times since we got here? What; are you so scared I’m going to leave you if I see you do what you’re made to do, even after…”

He stopped mid-stalk, fists clenched. “Yeah,” he said simply.

“What?” It came out at high volume still, because she hadn’t yet modulated to his lower frequency. 

“I’m scared to death that you’ll leave once you remember what I really am, Buffy.”

He stood there, fully clothed and naked as she had ever seen him, and oh. Oh, _God_. What the hell had she _done_ to him for all those years in Sunnydale? “Spike,” she whispered, shaken to her core, “don’t you know by now that I’m not going anywhere?”

“Not when…” He shook his head, looking broken. She thought she saw a suspicious wetness peeping through around the inside edges of kohl-black eyes; the soft inside the hard. “What we do is… what we do. Special dispensation from my own personal goddess. But it’s only us.” His voice ground down to a grating whisper. “You put me between the rock and the hard place today; between the hammer and the bloody anvil.” His shoulders hunched again in memory. “Had to make it alright for her. Had to let you see me do it. Had to know that you were back there, watchin’. Any moment, you might realize… what I am. Might remember… I’ve a killer in me. Might leave. And I’m… I can’t…”

/No, no, no…/ “Spike,” she whispered, starting forward. Caught his arms in her bloodied hands. Held tight. “Do you see me going anywhere?”

He refused to look her in the eye. 

/Oh, hell./ “Yeah,” she whispered. “It was hard for me to watch. But not because I was afraid you’d go too far, and not because I was worried about you losing control.” She opened her hands then, let him see the bloody row of crescents in her palms. “Because I know you had to make it alright for her, and I knew that I had to share you, even that much. Because I can’t give you enough to keep you going, and that makes me feel so inadequate that I wanted to break the world. Still do, and if I had a heavy bag in this place I’d be in there working it for an hour. But it’s not because of what you need to do. It’s because of _how_ you need to do it.” She shook it off, and let him see her do it. “I’m a big girl. I’ll deal.”

His eyes had lifted to meet hers somewhere along about the middle of this little confession, wide with shocked surmise. “I can stick to blokes, you know. If it makes it easier for you. I don’t give a toss if it makes ‘em uncomfortable if I give them a stiffy, doin’ what the demon does natural, yeah, long as I get fed. If it was me touchin’ the bird that bothered you…”

Buffy shook her head again, briskly, and choked back the lump in her throat. Muscled back the tears that threatened. “I highly doubt we can afford to be choosy in this place. You take whoever offers, or I’ll have your ears.”

He was glowing again, now, eyes bright and shining on hers. “You’re a wonder, Buffy.”

“I’m yours,” she answered simply. “I kinda thought you would’ve picked that up by now. And you’re mine, so I’m gonna take care of you…” She grunted in surprise when she found herself back against the door. 

“Say it again.” 

She smirked a little at him, glad they were back on an even keel. “Which part?” she teased.

His eyes blazed on hers, a perfect mix of distraught and pleading. “Don’t be like that, damn you. Just say it.”

“What?” she asked innocently. “That you’re mine?” He leaned closer into her face, a tiny growl hovering in his throat. “Or that I’m yours?”

All the fight went out of him. Still clinging to her shirt, his head dropped to hers, turned a little, and she felt him tremble. “Oh, Christ, Buffy…”

“Are you going to let me take care of you now? Because I know you still have that little leftover problem…” Little might be the wrong description, judging from what she could feel of him pressing into her belly. 

He was kind of a mess. 

Her suggestion was taken favorably, judging by the way he shivered against her. “I’m not gonna last long, luv,” he warned quietly.

“That’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.” God knew he’d done this for her enough times without reciprocation over the course of their time together. She owed him a freebie on credit without the slightest concern that he would do anything less than pay very gleefully, in full and with interest, the immediate soonest he could possibly manage it. 

His capitulation was made evident by the sudden relaxation of his body against her own. It was all she needed, and without another word she turned him; pushed him firmly against the door. Slid her hands up under his shirt to touch his abs; an exploratory gesture. Found with relief that they were coming back full force, already, just with that, which… God that was nice. And alarming, the ebb and flow of his muscles with every meal. He was on the ragged edge of his intake. They needed to get him on a better diet, stat. Slipped from thence down to undo his half-threaded belt. The pants undone next and without further ado, while he breathed hard above her, through his nose, fingers clinging to the cracked wood of the door like it was a lifeline. 

She had the jeans down and her hand on him before he could rock into her grip; stilled him with a quick squeeze that made him groan. “Shh.”

“Bloody fuck.”

“I’m right here.”

“You’re a bloody tease, is what you are.”

She shook her head, eyes on him. Knelt. “No.” And took him in her mouth.

He was almost as warm as life right now, so soon after feeding, which was… bizarre. He had been the last lover she’d had, and was again, and she was just simply not used to humans anymore. Vampire was her norm for a lover; but vampire with an unnatural diet. She realized now there were parts to being with a vamp that she had never considered, having spent all her intimate moments with two such who had chosen or been lowered to drinking garbage warmed up in a microwave, if not straight from a fridge; who had learned to tolerate that which was, in comparison to their normal diet, no doubt like eating cold, coagulated fast food leftovers that had sat open and stale on the counter for a week.

She had never felt the effects of a vampire on his true diet... or at least, not when she had been capable, of late, of paying the remotest bit of attention. Had never realized what it did to his body, his libido. Spike was warm, turgid, harder than she had ever seen him… and scrabbling at the door for purchase with every flick of her tongue. She had also never heard sounds like that from him before. Fierce, growling, keening like a wild animal, his hips making abortive thrusts that had a snapping wildness to them that she could tell were held in check only for her sake, and…

He wasn’t kidding that he wouldn’t be able to wait this time. Fascinated, she flattened her tongue on his frenum, tugged his foreskin down hard… and _sucked_.

He gave a massive jerk, throbbed like he was about to die or something, and came with an abrupt roar that shocked even her. And his fingers punched right through the wood of the door. 

_“Fuck!” _he bellowed… and to her stunned amazement he had her up by her shoulders before she had even swallowed; whirled them around, was pushing her back against the panel. Was in front of her, fingers flying, tearing at her pants like there was literally no tomorrow. 

“Spike, I just got these…” she protested weakly… but it was too late. The thin leather was shredded. Gone. Dead, and her underwear were shoved aside, probably torn, like she had many of those to spare in this place… and she barely noticed the sharp weals on her hips from the abrupt pressure because he already had his mouth on her, her partially-clad leg over his shoulder, and she didn’t even know what was happening anymore. Fumbled with her hand for the doorknob to try to keep her balance, because he was moving so hard in her he was rocking her whole body, and it was impossibly difficult to stand up, and her head was whirling, oh _god!_

He was making the most incredibly animalistic, feral sounds, somewhere down there below, where they rumbled through her entire being; up through her clit and inside her till they seemed to touch her somewhere in maybe her solar plexus? And she was going to disintegrate, she was going to fall apart; and her free hand was on his head, just trying to keep her balance, but she wasn’t going to be able to… “Spike, please,” she breathed, “get me down onto the floor, or I’m going to fall when I come.”

He moved, so fast again she couldn’t quite follow it, and she was on her back on the carpet in front of the door. Her head would have bounced, but somehow he had a hand up there to cradle it; just briefly, but then he was under her hips again, and he was back to making those _sounds, _and okay, he was pretty much one hundred percent inarticulate demon right now, and she was pretty much one hundred percent on board with that as long as he… As long as he kept… Doing… /Oh God…/ _That!_

“Just, yes, just keep…” Things inside her were already fluttering, and for the record, the best part about having a vampire for a lover was… they didn’t have to come up for air. “Don’t stop…”

He wasn’t listening at all. Thank god he knew her, because he was captain instinct right now, a ravenous animal who just happened to know exactly how to get her off, and she was going to fall apart. She needed something to hold on to, needed something to cling to… And she didn’t want to go back to who they had been before; before the lovemaking and before they’d stopped using each other, but he was driving her there as surely as body memory, his voice echoing in her head while everything inside her started to thrum and shine_. ‘No, it’s your calling. You gave me a run for _my_ money, pet.’_ And the fluttering was hovering on the verge of clenching already, and her legs were quivering with the need to clamp around him so hard it hurt, and her fingers ached to dig into him with everything she had, and did it really matter if they went back there as long as she wasn’t using him? He seemed to want it. His demon had always liked that she could join him there, and if…

He growled, loud against her clit, his tongue doing that thing that always drove her right over the edge, and—okay, let’s not be shy—she screamed a little at the vibration of it. And lost everything. Sitting up, her nails dug in, tearing hard into the material of his torn shirt. And through. 

He roared again; she thought her name. And plunged his fingers hard into her while his tongue drove against that spot, again and again, until the world went black and she unraveled. 

She came back to herself with her legs clamped tight around his head and shoulder, one arm still trapped against her so that his fingers could stay safely where they were for the remainder of recorded time, and if he was a human he’d be suffocated right now. Instead he was just…

Laughing. “Bleeding Christ, Buffy, I love you.”

It took a few seriously firm instructions to her legs before she could convince them it was a good idea to let him go. They unwound, albeit reluctantly, and he sat up, though he kept his digits where they belonged, because he knew what was good for him. Leaned over a little on his occupied elbow, curling his tongue behind his teeth, face gleaming with moisture. And lightly touched her clit with his index finger and a little interrogatory sound.

She made an ‘eep!’ noise and tried an abortive kick in his general direction that made him chuckle. “Good. Saw to you proper, then.”

“You touch me again for at least twenty minutes and I’ll kill you.”

Grinning, he laid his head down safely in the cup of her pelvis and, with exquisite gentleness, extricated his fingers, to the tune of her regretful sound, then snugged both hands happily under her ass. “Mmmm. Worse ways to die, pet.”

“Hm.” She shifted a little to get her head away from the door—her neck was kind of at a weird angle—and frowned. “Since when did you start talking again?”

“Demon got what he wanted. Sent him back to beddy-bye.” His lips were still really uncomfortably close to places that weren’t really ready for lips yet.

Best to keep him talking so he didn’t get any funny ideas. “Is it always like that after you’ve… fed?”

He just sort of hummed against her, which was really just totally unfair, and he needed to get away from some parts of her right now if he was going to be making noises like that, or she really was going to have to kick him. She lifted her head, which took some serious effort, preparatory to yanking his head up a little further up toward her belly-ish… Which was when she saw his shoulder blades, his neck, and the long red gouges peering out from between the rents she’d put in his shirt. And, yeah, they were already healing because he’d had blood; human blood, which he had so not been afforded way back when they first started this, and obviously there was a big difference in his healing factor, but that just highlighted what she had done to him before, when he hadn’t been able to heal as easily. 

And she saw it all in her mind’s eye again; those dozens of gouges and tears as she’d put in him when they’d broken a house the first time they were together and then just left him there, in the sun, unable to move or heal till nightfall. And then done it again and again; bruised and torn and beaten him before she could take her pleasure, because that meant that she was justified in having what she wanted; because she’d put him in his place first, by letting him know he was a thing. Not a person, definitely not worthy, even though he had been the only one who had _ever_…

Shame flooded her as she reached out with a shaking hand to touch one of the gouges. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

Catching her hand he chuckled roughly. Pulled her fingers over to his lips and kissed the blood away, lifting up from her crotch to grin at her and looking thoroughly sated. “Course you should’ve. Bleeding fuck, Buffy, that was fantastic.” He rolled over on his back so that the back of his head was now cradled in the cup of her pelvis and sighed. “Christ, I need a fag.” Clearly completely unaware of her descent into self-disgust he rolled away and limped out of his jeans, dug in them for a moment and pulled out his most recent lighter and whatever cigarettes he’d managed to scrounge. He then leaned over, holding out his hand to her. 

She caught it, let herself be drawn to her feet. Drew her fingers up, lingered over the already-fading scratches on his shoulder. 

He caught her hand again. Pulled it up, kissed her fingertips once more; one at a time, slowly, eyes focused on hers to the exclusion of all else. “Sodding fantastic,” he told her firmly.

She let out a breath. “Okay.”

“C’mon, luv.” He gave her a tug toward the balcony, and she followed readily enough; out to stand together on the wide deck. There were chaise lounges and things, but they stood in silence instead, him half-naked in her in her tattered remnants of clothes, and watched as the endless sunset finally fell off the teeter-totter into night here in hell. And finally, she asked the question that had plagued her mind for much of the evening. 

“Why didn’t you just thrall her?”

He remained quiet for a long moment. “‘S not one of my gifts, Buffy, to do the whole dog and pony show. Could probably have thrummed her into a bit of a stupor—more than I did to get her comfortable, any road—but then she’d go all dependent on me. Would want to keep coming back.”

That answered that. “So... you can.”

“‘M old enough, yeah. Can do it, a bit.” He played a little with his cigarettes, let out a tiny snort. He did that a lot, she noticed. Sighed, snorted, made all these little exhalations that were probably holdovers or affectations from his human life. She wondered if he did them more around her than around other vamps. Weird thought. “Did do, in a way, guess you could say. To calm her. But…”

“That… humming noise?”

“Heard it, did you?”

She looked away a little. “It sounded…” Predatory wasn’t even the right word. Subsonic. “Instinctive?” Which begged the question. “Why haven’t you ever done that… with me, if it’s… I mean, if it’s not…”

A faint smirk touched his lips in the lowering light; beautiful and mysterious. “Have done. You’ve heard me purrin’ along to your heartbeat, yeah?”

God yes, she had. Usually when she was half-asleep, or about to come. It was… sexy as hell, actually, in a strangely primitive way; like he was talking to a part of her brain that was older than words.

“Calms you down, innit, if you’re anxious, or brassed off?”

/Oh./ “But that’s not…” She would know. 

He snorted again, this time darkly. “Wouldn’t do that, and you know it.”

It was all so confusing. “So… if you _can_… then why _didn’t_ you ever do it to me, you know; before? We know I’m not immune, if Dracula could thrall me. And you wanted me. Wanted me to tell you… how I really felt, later. And I always turned you down…”

He stared at her through the gloaming as if she had lost her damn mind. “I wanted _you, _Buffy. Not a bloody zombie.” Tugged out his as-yet-unlit cigarette to speak more clearly. “If I wanted you to be the bloody bot, I’d’ve gone looking for that git and had him build me another.” His face twisted a little. “Not that it would’ve likely worked, since at best all I can do is quiet a part of the mind a bit. Like I said; the rest isn’t one of my gifts. Even with us bonded, you’re too strong-willed for it to do much to you than get you a bit relaxed; and that only when you’re willing. But _then_…” He shrugged fatalistically. “Once you’d kissed me and I knew what the real thing was like…” His eyes found hers, firm and frank. “Why the bloody hell would I want anything but _all_ of you? No matter what the cost?”

Warmth flowed through her. It was just another advantage he might have had over her that he had never employed, no matter how desperate he had become, no matter how twisted the power differential had lain between them. No matter how much he might have wanted to even the score between them, put them on level ground. Because he was an honorable man, and lived the very essence of fair play. Even when the other party did no such thing, and God, she didn’t deserve him. /But I’m sure the hell gonna try./ 

She slipped her hand into his. Held on tight as the sun-moon dyad turned to slivers before them, and the sounds began outside. And waited. Waited for the night. It had been theirs, for a lot longer than these days here had been. Their time, in a way, if only because they had never had to share it with anyone else. 

Though, actually, when she thought about it, it was the calm before the storm, when the night was still coming on, when they had ever met. Before the hunt, with no one else around. Now, when the sun was setting, and he could leave the shadows and step out into the dusk. Wait with her for the light to disappear completely so that she could join him. They had worked together after… but they had always met before, in the twilight before darkness fell.

The cool hand in hers twitched before it slipped away. Spike finally lit up as the last light disappeared from the sky, moon and sun vanishing in tandem so that only the tiny flame lit his face, made the little green Bic glow. So weird to see him using something that wasn’t the Zippo, but that had long since run out of fuel, and now sat in a place of permanent worship, like a shrine, on the nightstand. 

The Bic flickered out, leaving behind only the coal-bright light at the end of his cigarette, and the fragrance of the burning tobacco; familiar as the smell of his body. In the distance, in the last fringes of rusty orange light, bat-winged, demonic monstrosities winged across the fading horizon and painted the night dark and starless; a silent, lightless oven.

His hand found hers once more in the stillness. She folded hers into his, and they stood together in the pitch black, blocking out the sounds they could not help…

And found comfort in one another.

***  
  
  
  
  
Tell you what; these two know how to rough and tumble... and how to rough and tumble. They've just revised some rules in the contact sport game of late. *g*


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's some SpikePOV for everyone, since it's been a while. Check in with the ol' Master-vamp-cum-demon-lord and see how he's handling all that responsibility, spuffy's new domesticity, and such...
> 
> It's a bit of a slow, catching up kind of chapter, and I apologize in advance for the (vague, minor) cliffhanger, but you know... that was just how the word-count broke down.

It was becoming a bit of a problem, this business of their notoriety spreading about the township. It appeared thus far that the rumors of their general benevolence were mostly circulating through human channels… but a few of the more cuddly demons were starting to get wind of there being a relatively magnanimous demon-lord or two thereabouts who might look kindly on types who didn’t necessarily do any useful mayhem or weren’t skilled in maiming the peasantry. Not necessarily the best reputation to have in the wider political world, though the rumors seemed to get continually lost in the shuffle. Lords were rising and falling all over the damned city at the drop of hat in petty little wars for territory, of attrition over unmentionable slights, whole sodding place was at sixes and sevens most of the time. 

In comparison, Beverly Hills was sitting fairly pretty, what with their ongoing, stable management. One coup and one alone was a some damned good bragging rights, to be right honest about it, and it said something about their strength and cohesiveness that they had managed to stay on top of their territory for so long without being overthrown from within or overtaken from without.

That fact alone made them seem powerful, and warned off the little kinglets passing land back and forth as Los Angeles proper continually changed hands outside their borders. Everyone was caught up in their own struggles, for the most part. Meanwhile, one might consider it a nice perk to start seeing the ‘chattel’ flocking toward them. Any rate, saved some effort in the whole coordinating roundups portion of festivities, and made the jittery castoffs a bit easier when it came to convincing them that he wasn’t likely to rip out their throats for them when Buffy went about recruiting blood donors for him—Christ, that was a twist, yeah?—but still it made him anxious as bleeding hell that they were becoming known as a bloody Olly-Olly-In-Free.

Luckily, they weren’t the only ones with that kind of reputation. Rumor had it a green demon with the hell of a singing voice had taken up residence over by Silver Lake and was welcoming just about anyone willing to behave in a cooperative fashion. /Should’ve known Greenie would land on his feet./ The poofter was a damn genius at getting folk to work together, witchy peace spells or no, and his open-door policy was doing the trick right now of distracting attention away from Illyria-with-Spike-and-an-undercover-Buffy’s slightly more clandestine operation here in Beverly Hills.

The clock was ticking, though. They might need to start making some territorial moves or summat, and the very thought put Spike right off his blood. Christ, he was having enough trouble managing the territory he had, what with Fred Sonja in a twist half the time and either huddling upstairs with her bleedin’ corpse, or switching from girl to Blue Meanie and back again without warning four, five times a week—what the bloody hell was he going to do if she ever did it in the middle of a parlay with one of these other tossers holding territory round the way?—and dealing with his ever more restive lot of chits, who were becoming more and more fractious by the day since his Slayer’s arrival.

Christ; he loved having Buffy here. God alone knew what kind of mess he’d be in by now without her about. Half-starved by now, most like, or half-mad and most of a demon again. Hell; probably gone frig with Maria or summat just to keep the damn thing busy so he could focus on the business at hand. That, or huddled up in the basement eating rats in secret and wondering where all his barely-scrabbled-together power and influence had gone. Tough to save face in a demon dimension once everyone else found out you had a hitch in your ability to eat like a demon. He’d lose half his court in a day, Old One or no Old One. And once the other lords got wind of what a wanker he’d become…

Bloody hell. 

He’d never been more brassed off against Buffy in his long unlife as when she’d forced him to take a nip from that woman, Joan, with her kid looking on. But Christ; feeling life flowing into him again, straight from a beating heart, without any other distractions…

He’d fucking forgotten, it had been so bleeding long. Forgotten what it could be like to feel his fingers come alive; to feel awake to his toes. To feel the power rush through his body, enlivening every muscle, bringing him to roaring goodwill and the sense of the enormous power he could bring to bear with the simple flexing of his fingers or the snap of his shoulders. Or hips. Bloody fuck.

When it was with Buffy it was to be expected. After all, that was Slayer blood. And, caught up as it was in the midst of sex and mating and all that, it was different. Changed. Not about the feed at all, it was turned to something both bigger, and muted; a rush like nothing else and yet softened by what they shared into an emotional high that confused him into a state of rest. It distracted, focused, made the rush simmer, last longer. 

But then, taking what he needed from Buffy; it was never about getting himself set right in that way. It was about them, first; about the bonding. Getting himself topped off was a damned nice side-benefit, but that was by far the more secondary matter. 

Of course, if he wasn’t taking her blood, it would have long since rendered the whole sodding thing moot, since having her blood was the reason he had her bond as well… but hell if he was about to start making human thralls out of any of these wankers he fed from otherwise. _They_ were food, if he was gentle about it these days. And they were different altogether anyway.

The human feed… It hit fast, died quick. It was standard. And, without sex it was unmasked. He was able to remain suspended in the moment without distraction, feel the sensations and the primal insanity of blood flowing down his throat and all the rest of it. There were no emotions, only sensations. 

The sex… That came after. Which was a whole other reward; not to mention, Christ, being inside Buffy during the high, cumming in her while he came down, was…

Fucking, bloody Christ. That was like nothing he had ever experienced in his century and a quarter on Earth. Nothing at all like fucking Dru while they both came down from the hunt, even. Because now, with Buffy looking at him the way she did anymore—not even as if he wasn’t a monster, but as if she knew his monster, and didn’t _care!_ As if she _loved_ his monster, even!—and holding him safe while he lost himself, and joining him with her heat, cumming around him while he came undone…

Christ; a man could dust happily in that moment and to sodding hell with any other consideration.

There was something truly bizarre about this dimension. He and Buffy made love now, as often as they fucked. Fucked instead of fought. Fought… and got past it same day, and went on like there was nothing about it. Sparred and fucked like a couple of laughing children. She brought him sodding _blood_ donors. The goddamned _Slayer! _They spent every ‘night’ together—every bleeding one, like clockwork—talking like they had those few precious weeks in his crypt before everything had gone to hell, or like they had down in the basement at Revello; getting to know one another all over again, and Christ, it was more precious to him than the century he had spent with his sire. But it all seemed like some kind of topsy-turvy dream. 

This couldn’t be real, could it? Him being the bloody leader, up there on a throne like a tosser next to the Smurf, acting like he knew what the buggering hell he was doing, with _Buffy_, of all people, pretending to be his cute little human piece of ass and private bloodbag and looking as vapid as the cheerleader she had used to be… when they both knew that fifteen minutes before she had had him tied to the headboard upstairs and had just rogered him within an inch of his life while he’d begged for more. 

Her using the bonds on him; that had been a right revelation. Not that she hadn’t held him down before, with all her unbelievable, mind-melting strength. Had held him helpless any number of times while she had her way with him; but she had never stooped to actual bonds before now, no matter how he had yearned to submit himself to her in that way. She had let _herself_ go with him in that fashion a time or two, and reveled in the loss of control (after, of course, well establishing that she wasn’t in any way his and that it was entirely a fit of temporary insanity). But the other way about? It had been a freedom she had never permitted herself before things had changed between them; he knew because she hadn’t wanted to claim him, and moreover hadn’t trusted herself not to go too far. To hurt him too badly, or even to dust him while he was helpless, when he had never harmed her, chip or no; out of her own self-despite. 

But now… Now she could give herself that leeway. To render him all hers… and love him till he screamed and pleaded for her tender mercies. And smile saucily at him all the while, and Christ, maybe he was in a coma? Or maybe this was all some very elaborate dream. The sort a person had when they were still suspended in a crystal amulet. Though why he would first dream that he’d spent a bleedin’ year pandering to Angel in an evil sodding law firm was beyond his comprehension.

Through the bloody looking glass, if it wasn’t through the amulet and into Wonderland that way. Any road, everything was bizarrely backward; almost as if he and Buffy had switched places in some ways. Him, doing the leader bit—or trying to do it justice, at least—and her standing back just that much, offering him council. It bothered him a bit, he didn’t mind saying. Niggled at him more each day; unnerved him even, that she continued to hide her light under a bushel like this. He worried it would dim her radiance somehow. But when he brought it up all she’d say, with a little, mysterious smile, was that she was having “a nice vacation”, and that she was “proud of him”.

God knew she’d earned the former. And as to the latter… Christ, he hoped like hell he could continue to earn it in her eyes. He might do, just perhaps, if she remained at his side to hold him up, guide him, jolly him along when he lost his way, his focus, got a bit overwhelmed, or just ran true to form and turned into an impatient git. Even with the soul on to ride herd on his demon he had a tendency to prefer Alexander’s solution to Gordian problems. Why not just slice through the sodding thing with the sharpest axe you could find and move right the bloody hell on? You even had two ropes afterward instead of the one, if frayed and a bit shorter, maybe somewhat the worse for wear.

Buffy, though, had done what he was now doing since she was a sodding child, and knew how to keep ropes whole, how to patiently pick at complicated knots till they came apart. And she had the patience for even a pillock like _him_, when he lost focus. _“I don’t know what the bloody fuck I’m doing, Slayer,” _he’d told her just the other day in exasperation. “_You’d better not go anywhere, or I’ll lose my bleeding mind, yeah? Just start guttin’ everybody to simplify things.”_

She’d merely smiled in response. Even managed to look fond, or at least tolerant. _“No, you won’t. Too messy.”_

He’d snorted, darkly dismissive. _“Been cleaning up entrails m’whole life, pet. Don’t even need a hose here. Have minions.”_

She’d merely favored him with little head-shake. _“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”_

He had, of course. She’d meant for his resurgent conscience. Bugger the thing. It meant doing everything the long way ‘round. Sod it all. 

Her soft voice had penetrated his bleak study. _“Anyway, you’re being a dope. I’m not going anywhere, William. After all, you didn’t.” _

It always took him a moment to get his nancy arse together whenever she called him by his given name. Brought him to his sodding knees when she did it; especially now, without the bite of knowing it was a sop, and her leaving. Nothing in it anymore saying he was only a man to her when she wasn’t using his body. Now, when she said it, it meant he was always, all of him, wholly hers, and that she saw—and more than that, _wanted—_all of him; no matter whether she was asking him to fight or riding his cock or recognizing the part of him who might just as soon have to fight back an unmanly tide of emotion. She didn’t hold that against him either, it seemed, and never hit him when he was down anymore, so that he was coming to trust that… he was safe to feel with her. 

Spike, she called him, when they were in a fight. Her comrade-in-arms. But William… 

Christ, when she called him that he thought sometimes he might fall down and worship her on the spot. 

At his blink of confusion, she’d expanded patiently. _“You were my councilor all that last year, when you had absolutely zero reason to stay…”_

That assertion had earned her a disbelieving scoff. 

She’d laid a hand to his cheek. _“I’m just returning the favor.”_

_“That all, is it?”_

_“Well, that, and you’re really good in bed. I’ve been pretty horny since a certain vamp stopped putting out sometime last year.”_

Stung, he’d leaned away to eye her narrowly. _“Wasn’t aware you wanted me to put out, yeah?”_

She’d shrugged. _“Yeah, well. Maybe I wasn’t either. By the time I got clear on that in my own head and figured out how to word about it, it was a little late, huh?”_

/Bloody woman./_ “Was a little slow on the uptake, too, maybe. Though, to be fair, considerin’…”_

She’d shrugged, dismissing it. _“I probably should have just let you in on some of my more vivid dreams about you. It would’ve saved time.”_

_“Oh, yeah?” _He’d been fairly interested in that subject, to be sure. 

She’d gone down a whole other tack, though, looking strangely preoccupied. _“Not as vivid as the ones I had right before I came here to get you, though. Those ones almost felt… Slayer-y. The all-night-long, ‘actually felt like you were there trying to tell me something’ type of dream. Really vivid in that… ‘really felt like you were there’ kind of way that isn’t…” _

She’d frowned then. _“You know, it’s weird. I haven’t had a single Slayer dream since we came here. They were coming thick as thieves right before, like something huge was building. Dreams about a starless night sky with a single what-do-you-call-it; morning-star on the horizon, and one with just the sound of marching feet… And the ones with you. The Scourge, maybe, one of ‘em. Don’t know about the other one.” _Eyes like forests, guileless on his. _“The third one’s obvious, but I thought with everything building—that feeling that stuff was coming—that I just really missed you, because that was basically all I was having; Slayer-dreams and dreams of you.” _She’d smiled at him, troubled but radiant; the kind of smile that tended to have him at her feet._ “Clearly I didn’t want to face another apocalypse without my left hand.” _

/Oh, Christ, Love…/

Her expression had turned troubled. _ “But… I think sometimes they crossed, because the old dreams of you were mostly made up of memories, but the ones of you at the end there were more… image-y and symbol-y and less… physical, if that makes sense.”_

Interesting, that, if in an entirely other way than the other. Made him wonder if that might’ve been half the reason she’d come. The chit was nothing if not driven by her sodding visions; though the thought that he might have ranked enough to star in any of the things, even fleetingly, was almost worrying. 

_ “And now… Just… nothing.”_

_“Yeah, well,” _he’d temporized,_ “could be you’re blocked off here, yeah? Dreams are a Powers deal, innit? Like those soddin’ Visions they used to send to whoever was guidin’ Peaches around by the nose before…”_

_“Yeah; lucky him,” _Buffy had murmured, and frowned petulantly. _ “He’s part demon, but he didn’t have to have his own visions. He just had to do the champion-y part. Someone else got to have his visions for him and just hand over the instructions. Because let me tell you; interpreting that Powers crap is no joke.”_

It did beg the question, didn’t it. _“Maybe They thought he wasn’t up to the task. Bit shaky sometimes, our boy Angel.”_

_“Mm.”_

_“Consider it a compliment?”_

_“Feh.” _She’d sat up straight in his lap for a moment, dislodging him from nuzzling into her palm. _“You know what? Why didn’t I realize before now that I was part-demon when we heard about that Doyle guy who was getting visions for Angel? Or at least when we found out about Cordelia needing to be part-demon to handle them? I mean, it would’ve made things a lot easier for us if I’d’ve recognized that that meant I’m…”_

Onerous thing, not to smirk at her. Difficult in the extreme to be anything less than gentle in hindsight. _“You were a bit distracted along about then, pet.”_

She’d eyed him in something like disbelief. _“You’re so chill sometimes about how I treated you that it completely defies description.”_

_“Tough to be brassed, luv, when you’re practically nesting with me now. Makes every damn bit of it seem worth it in retrospect.”_

_“Masochist.”_

_“Yeah, well. Puttin’ that aside…”_

_“Because you can’t deny it…”_

They both knew he couldn’t. _“Nice break for you, any road, yeah, if They can’t find you here? Bonus for being stuck in Hell and under the Partners’ thumbs an’ that.”_

_“Yeah, I guess.” _She’d turned in his arms to bury her face in his neck._ “As if this isn’t vacation enough. I mean, no army to lead, nobody backtalking me all the time.” _Nuzzled him a little in a way that always made him sit up and take notice._ “Plenty of sex, somehow magically mostly angst-free for, like, the first time in my life; which, by the way, thank you…”_

_“No charge.” _His voice had gone a bit rough for a patch, there.

_“No hellmouth…”_

He’d snorted again, this time in disbelief, because was she really listing that as a plus when she was in one of the dimensions from which hellmouths issued their wee gifts? 

_“You know what I mean. It’s like we’re off the clock. It’s already, what? July or something, and no apocalypse…”_

_“We’re _inside_ the bloody thing, Buffy. It’s a great, thundering, ongoing, long-term, massive sodding apocalypse.”_

_“Yeah, well. Best one I’ve ever had. It’s like a summer in Borneo.”_

Sometimes her blasé attitude could make even a vampire incredulous._ “You’ve been twisted by youthful abuses.”_

_“Tell me something I don’t know.” _She’d exhaled; a bitty little sigh that had pleasantly tickled his neck with her warm breath. _“But I mean it; this is like a vacation in a way. Like… being human without the stress.”_

_“Alright, Love, you’re gonna have to explain that one to me.”_

She’d lifted her head briefly to stare off into the distance, seeming vaguely troubled. _“I gave up a long time ago on thinking that being totally human would be any kind of blessing for me. Knowing what I know, it would just make me crazy, not being able to help. Losing my abilities once taught me that.” _

/Losing…/ When had she_... _

_“I’d just feel weak and helpless.” _Pressing away from him a tad, she’d met his eyes thoughtfully._ “Kinda like you were, I guess, with the chip, huh?” _

Alright, this was a story he needed to hear at some bloody point. _“Never any fun being diminished.”_

_“No,” _she’d agreed pensively._ “Even being a little less with the speed-healing here is weird. But here at least I’m not… I dunno; on-call? I don’t have to freak, ‘cause I’m still me, I can handle myself if I need to; but no one knows me. I’m not the only point-person, not even the leader for a change. It’s… relaxing.”_

He could sure the bloody hell see how it might be, after all she’d had to sodding do in her short life. God knew he wasn’t finding the place all that relaxing from that standpoint, and he’d be stressed as hell if she weren’t here to offer advice, give a hand… and to assist with the tension relief, as it were, on a regular basis. Which she had recently told him was only fair, since he had been her sounding board and personal masseuse for four months and change back in good old Sunnyhell once upon a time, and had remained the former, if not the latter, for the better part of that whole last year. 

What Red didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her about how very little her birthday gift had seen any use. They gave each other back-rubs now, and no one missed the bitty, battery-operated massager. Nor yet any other battery-operated item Buffy might have had tossed in any drawer back where she had been living, or so she assured him. Nice to know one’s talents had always rated higher than the finest technology known to modern man. Heh.

_“I’m just one in a crowd; really this time. Like what was promised with the whole Scythe spell, but that never really worked out according to advertising, ‘cause they still needed a general, and I was It. But here…”_

He’d stroked her hair, loving that this got to be even a tiny bit of heaven for her, in trade for having followed his worthless arse into hell. Worth it, his taking on the whole bloody disaster of leading. _“You get to just be you.” _/I’ll take it on and keep it, Love. Forever, if need be, if this is what it means for you. You bloody well deserve it./

She’d nodded and lain her head against him once more._ “Yeah. That.” _A little shrug, more seen than felt._“Even though it feels weird for me, not to have the Visions, you know? I’m so used to having them; to taking orders, I guess. I’m not sure how to just… live my own life.” _

Spike’s heart had squeezed in agony for his love, so weighted down by such massive responsibility from such a young age. Christ, had coming for him been the first thing she had ever done for her own reasons in…

Hell, when had Buffy ever done anything solely for her own preferences, her own comfort, her own heart; at least since sleeping with his sod of a grandsire had no doubt taught her never to take such a bleeding risk again? /Fuck, when has she ever had that sodding luxury? She’s had the whole goddamned world on her shoulders since she was a wee chit!/ Bloody hell, no wonder she was fighting so damnably hard to own her choice to come, no matter what way it had turned out.

_“I feel… disconnected,” _she’d gone on._ “Like I’m flying blind.” _And she’d lifted her head abruptly to regard him with candid intent. _“Is this what it’s like to have normal dreams?”_

The question had caught him unawares, caused him to eye her in surprise. _“Wouldn’t know, would I, Slayer? Don’t reckon a vamp has what counts as normal dreams, yeah?” _At her startled look, he’d shrugged slightly. _“Don’t rightly recall what my human dreams were like…”_

_“You think they’re so different?” _Open curiosity was the watchword of the day.

He’d lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug, since god knew he had no real basis for comparison anymore. As he’d indicated, he had no real recollection of what his dreams had been like before his siring. It had, after all, been a bloody century and more behind him; another life, another consciousness, another way of processing the world and everything in it.

_“What’re vamp dreams like?” _she’d inquired, clearly diverted. 

/Oh, bloody hell…/_ “Sensations, yeah? Urges. All sex and blood and violence and the lot. Course, they changed a bit when I got the soul back in charge, innit? Less wild sometimes, more disjointed and emotional… Less sex and more symbolism…”_

_“Oh, yeah?” _She’d sounded frankly interested at this point, if a bit amused. Which made sense, he supposed, since putting them on a continuum from the earthbound demon he’d been with his wholly physical concerns, to the human emotional dreamscape, to her demon-gifted Slayer dreams made it sound as if humanity was some sort of way-station in between two types of demonkind, somehow, which to be blunt about it was odd as hell.

He’d caught the instigating expression a bit too late to see the danger he was in. _“You have a lot of sex dreams?”_

/Oh, sod off, Slayer./_ “The demon bit of me does.” _And the less said about that, the better.

_“Hm. Any main stars?” _she’d asked, almost coquettishly. 

/Hell./_ “No need to fish about, pet. You’ve been the only star in my dreams—and my fantasies—since I fell for you.” _He’d ground it out, forehead to hers. _“God help me; since before, and you know it.”_

The short pause told him somehow, maybe she hadn’t. _“I didn’t know that.” _It exited her lips softly, and she’d even managed to sound surprised, of all sodding things. 

He’d favored her with a lifted brow. _“You don’t think I’d toss off thinkin’ about anyone else, do you?” _It’d come out gruffly, but he’d softened at her amazed look. Honest to Christ, she was actually _surprised_. _“I _told_ you, Buffy. It’s only ever been about you. Has been since the start.”_

She’d closed her eyes, looked away. _“Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d… I mean, you didn’t even have to be… you know… faithful in _person_, much less…”_

He’d rolled his eyes, exasperated. _“Don’t be daft, Buffy. It’s not about that. It’s just, no one else could hold one tenth the fascination for me that you do.” _He’d stroked her cheek till her eyes lifted to meet his._ “No one holds a candle to you, pet. Why even bother thinkin’ about anyone else? It’s not even about tryin’. It just is.” _

She’d met his eyes solemnly, verdant and earnest in the low light of their suite. _“I only think of you, you know. Since us. I hope you know that. Even when I tried not to, when I tried to think of someone else; even just some faceless…” _

/When she was grieving, and thinking of me hurt too much. Christ./

_“It didn’t matter. You always showed up. Memories of us always took over; even when I didn’t want them to, even when they made me feel so guilty sometimes that I…”_

/Oh, bloody hell./ _“Buffy…” _She needed to stop. She needed to absolve herself of all that shite, if she wanted him to do the sodding same.

She’d lifted her eyes to meet his, half-ashamed, half-burning. _“Even before…this… you ruined me for anyone else. Ever.”_

Thrown from his previous track, he hadn’t been able to halt the soft, slow, gentle smile that touched his lips; and if he was a nancy for it, he’d be one and proud. _“Good to know it, Love.”_

He came back to the present at the sound of Illyria’s emotionless tones, passing judgment on some poor fool. Straightened in his throne and fought to erase the soft smile from his lips. It wasn’t befitting a sodding demon-lord, for one bloody thing. 

“We must find the source of the rumors,” his co-ruler announced flatly to the wide room. Her odd ultramarine eyes focused unblinking on the Loose-Skinned demon they’d rescued last week, piercing. “You. How did you find us?”

The little Clem-alike shivered like she was about to be eaten. “I… I… Just heard, Your Worship. Th…through the grapevine…”

“I do not understand the reference. Explain.”

“I…”

If he didn’t break in the inoffensive little thing was liable to just fall apart in front of them; and then they’d get nothing out of her. Illyria was just too bloody imposing for a squishy little bit like this one. “It’s alright, pet. Just breathe. What we’re tryin’ to get at is, how long do you think this bit of information has been circulating, like? And is it something you got from the humans, or is it common knowledge among the quieter demons like yourself?”

The flabby little creature relaxed a bit and composed herself. She kept her eyes focused on Spike, as if looking at a vampire—probably an altogether more familiar sight than an Old One all sodding mashed down into a human shell—was far less unnerving an experience when it came to an audience in hell. “I… Um, yeah. You know… I heard about it only… the other day. Maybe… two days before I started coming this way? From a human. B…but I know others have… heard. About it too. Not… specifics, you know; but that somewhere in this part of town there’s a place where… no one will make you do the deadly or… you know. Kill you if you don’t… wanna eat people or whatever.” She tried a nervous, toothy little smile.

/Bloody hell./ “Alright, bit. Why don’t you head on back down to your nest, yeah, while we figure this one out. Get yourself summat to eat. Ask one of the girls.”

The little demon gave them both a quick, clumsy bow and fled. Clearly she didn’t need to be asked twice.

“Well,” Spike commented blandly. “That’s discomfiting.”

“It must be dealt with,” Illyria agreed. “I shall ponder the difficulty.” She rose. “If we do not have other business?” She was already making for the door.

“No. You alright?”

“I am functional.” Without another word, the demigod swept out of the Crystal Ballroom to head back to her suite. Probably to work on reviving yet another moribund plant, or to moon at her bloody awful cadaver. There really was no shortage of the former in this dimension, what with the lack of potable water. No shortage of corpses, either, but she was really only interested in the one, so he couldn’t even talk her into binning the old one for a new, fresher sort.

Honestly, Spike had the sinking feeling of late that Illyria believed somehow that if she could bring a plant back, maybe she might be able to reanimate Wes, which was…

/Christ, we don’t need a rotten sodding zombie around, on top of everything./ 

He understood loneliness, though. And if he didn’t have Buffy…

Off to one side, Spike could feel the Slayer’s approval wafting off of her in waves to bathe him. They’d talked about this before court today; about how to handle this little interrogation. He’d been anxious about it; about how to draw the little beast out. _“I’m not saying you can’t do it, Spike,”_ she had told him quietly, poking at the arm of her chair. _“You’re actually more of a people-person than you give yourself credit for, and you have _miles_ of charisma. Your problem is you need to remember when you were confident about it.”_

_“Yeah. Been on my own for a bit too long, I reckon_.”

She’d looked away with a little shrug. “_That’s partially my fault…”_

_“Oi. I don’t recall you shootin’ me with a dart gun and strappin’ me to a table to stick that bloody chip in my head…”_

_“No,”_ she’d told him softly, _“but I didn’t go out of my way to help you integrate while you tried to find your way afterward.” _A little shrug_. “Never gave you the benefit of the doubt, no matter how hard you tried. Probably made it a lot harder to turn over a new leaf, huh? Find your way?”_

He’d managed a faint smile, dismissing it all in retrospect. _“Wasn’t like I was expecting any special treatment, Buffy. I was a Master vamp, slayer of Slayers to boot, fallen on hard times and beggin’ the soddin’ Slayer for table scraps. Every day you didn’t just stake me was a bloody win.” _

To his surprise and ultimate discomfort, though, she had shaken her head, casting off his bland acceptance of the past._ “No, I’ve given this a lot of thought lately. I always adopt the castoffs; right away. Make them my own. But just like everything else, somehow you were the exception.”_ She’d met his eyes, and he’d been shocked to see shame there. _“You were an outcast demon who couldn’t hurt any of us. Like little Clemette downstairs; but instead of dealing with that, I just took that as an excuse to bully and abuse you. To get my own back at you while you were defenseless, couldn’t even fight back. Made you pay for all the things any vamp had ever done to me. For not being the vamp I wanted in my life… or you know. For whatever I was mad about that day. And you let me because you needed sanctuary and we were all you had… and then because you went crazy and fell for me…”_

Humor was all he had to fight the growing uneasiness. _“Sorry. Bit twisted, I guess.”_

She’d managed a quiet, regretful laugh. _“I’m being serious, though, Spike. You told me… after I came back? That you weren’t much for crowds. But I think maybe that was a lie. That you were just making yourself into whatever I needed you to be, all over again. Because while I was gone you got to belong. You got to have a family; or at least, you got to have friends again. You were part of the group.” _ He’d started, gaping, but she’d just gone on like he hadn’t even moved. _“I finally asked Dawn; mostly because I didn’t understand. Why she’s been so broken up over losing you, and because I needed to hear. About you. Anything about you. I couldn’t hear it before, but now…”_ She’d shrugged again, looking away. _“She told me; about how you two were, then. How you were with the Scoobies. And I guess I only realized just then all that you lost when I…”_

_“I wouldn’t trade it for an instant, Buffy,”_ he’d told her insistently, leaning forward. _“You know that, right? To have you back, alive…”_

_“But you were _alone_ again,”_ she’d interrupted, eyes solemn and pained on his. _“The instant I came back you were pushed out. The place you’d carved out in the group. In the house, with Dawn. All of it was just… gone. You went back to being the outsider looking in, and the Scoobies just… let it happen. I mean, of course Dawn did; she was a kid. She had to go with the flow. But my friends…” _She’d looked away again. _“We were always really great at letting anyone drift off who wasn’t currently attached to a core member. Like when Willow and Tara broke up, or when Anya and Xander fell apart. We became crappy friends to them, completely forgot to be there for their lives. Everything became totally one-sided.”_

Her eyes had locked back onto his. _“You were there every day for five months, weren’t you? Taking care of Dawn every night. Fighting at their sides. Saving their lives, watching their backs. And then all the sudden… boom. You were back to being the outcast vampire in the crypt. Untouchable guy with the bad crush. And the only connection you had to anyone was… me. Broken Buffy. So you did whatever you needed to do, became whatever you needed to become to hang onto that…”_

/No, no, no…/ She was starting to worry him, to be honest. _“I kept you broken, Buffy, so I could keep you mine.”_ And the self-disgust he still felt for that had twisted in him. 

_“No,”_ she’d answered, shaking her head solemnly. _“Not at first. At first… you were there for me. And for a minute it was okay, right? Because I made you my sole confessor. I came to you when I couldn’t come to anyone else. I opened up…”_

_“Buffy…”_ She had been getting too close to things that he had never wanted her to see. Things he hated that he had done, now, in hindsight. But she wasn’t about to stop. Not now. Not when she was so ready, after all this time, to drain every wound. 

_“I kept you mine. _Only_ mine, and didn’t tell anyone what you did for me… You were trying to be better, but I needed you to be bad so I could be dirty. I dragged you back down with me…”_

_“Buffy, don’t…”_

_“I kept you mine,” _she’d repeated. Drawn a deep breath, like someone about to jump off a cliff. And faced him squarely_. “And then I cut you off. Shut you out, started treating you like you were just my info-dump again. I left you with nothing.”_

_“Buffy…” _He sounded like a bloody doll on a string, but he couldn’t even speak anymore, he’d been so at a loss.

_“So of course you broke a little_,” she’d gone on grimly. “I_ would. You sat there and gave me everything of yourself, and I couldn’t accept it. I wasn’t in that place. I hated myself too much…”_

Panic flooding his very being. /Fight back! Fight back. Don’t let her take it all on!/ _“I threw it in your face, luv. I told you you came back wrong…”_

She’d smiled into his eyes. _“For all we know I did. Tara said I got a deep cosmic suntan, but I’m starting to think that cosmic suntan was my cells changing. The human parts burning away a little, and the parts that are all Slayer getting concentrated. The parts they infused with demon or whatever?”_ She’d shrugged it off nonchalantly_. “There’s got to be a reason for why I am the way I am. I’m not going to sweat it anymore. What matters is, I couldn’t deal. I started treating you like all I wanted from you was just your body and not your heart. Just whatever, depending on the day. How could you be expected to keep up?”_

He hadn’t been able to keep up today. When the hell had she become so bloody insightful?

_“And, you know, I’ve always been the queen of saying stupid things first without thinking them through. Action-girl here, right?”_ She’d lifted her hand ruefully. _“Trying to change that. But back then I was on autopilot. Living in the lizard brain; probably worse than I ever was. So I just blurted out stupid stuff that was totally calculated to drive you over the edge, or completely shut you out so that the only way you could even reach me was to get me to fight with you. Or I pushed you away when you came to me with your heart on your sleeve, just so I could prove that I wasn’t that into you before I could allow myself to give in to what I really wanted. Which was _you.”

Her eyes had glowed on his, shocking him with their intensity. _“It was you all along, Spike, whatever I said. When I said things about ‘convenient’ and…”_ She’d looked down, shaking her head. _“Called you a ‘disgusting thing’…”_ Shame had dripped from her voice. _“I was trying so hard to convince myself that I didn’t want you more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. That I didn’t_ need _you. Because I thought I _shouldn’t_. Because that would mean I really_ was _wrong… and because I knew you loved me.” _She’d lifted one shoulder, dropped it like a lead weight_. “Before I died it was because if I admitted it it would mean that everything was a lie; because if you _could_ love, that meant that Angel never really did. Not the way I believed he did, anyway, and I _couldn’t_ believe that." _ The agony for her, admitting it. _ "But after I came back…” _A tiny shift of her shoulders that wasn’t quite a shrug, more of an acceptance of weight; of culpability. _“Because I didn’t deserve love; and also what kind of person was I if someone without a soul loved me, and around and around and around…”_

_“Oh, bloody hell, Buffy…”_

_“I told myself I was just using you, when really what I was doing was _abusing_ you. Because you were the mirror I looked into to see the dark side of myself, and I hated that it was even there. And if I could tell myself that if you weren’t real, then maybe I wasn’t either, right? The dark parts of me? I could lie to myself and say it was all imaginary, what we were doing.” _She’d sighed_. “And if you weren’t real—if none of it was real—then it didn’t matter what I did to you.” _The shame oozing from her tones alarmed him terribly. _“And then I cut you away from even that contact, as twisted as it was. Told you it was because it was killing me… when really, I was killing _you_, wasn’t I? I really missed the mark on that one…”_

_“Buffy; please, Christ, don’t…”_

_“So you eventually snapped,”_ she’d informed him sadly, lifting her gaze from her open palms… and he’d been shocked to see actual tears sitting un-shed in her eyes. _“And I see now why. Watching you here, with all your court around you. Watching you thrive. You’re not meant to be alone, are you? Isolated like you were in Sunnydale. Like I _made_ you be.”_

He’d moved before he’d even known he’d started; ended up before her chair and kneeling with her hands in his. Pleading, because it wrecked him to see her in pain, and because he couldn’t handle it if she spoke of it_. “Buffy, don’t. I…” _/_Please_ don’t./

But she’d ridden right over him as if he hadn’t spoken at all. _“Don’t deny it. You were a _part_ of something, before I came back and ruined it for you.”_

_“Buffy, for Chrissake…”_

_“You can say all you wanted to that you were all I had… but the reality was I was all _you_ had. And I took even that away; over and over and over again. I just kept stripping you down to nothing, till you were just so desperate to… I don’t know. Provoke some kind of emotional response from me that you just… completely reverted. Because you _needed_ me. And I was empty. I wasn’t there. And then I took away even my body; took away all contact. Left you completely alone, when I’d made myself all you had…”_

It was a horror; made him pull away in self-disgust. _“Just bloody _stop_ it, alright, Slayer! You need to stop excusing me for what I did that night! Never, _ever_ do that! Do you understand me? Don’t you know I relive that nightmare on loop every second I touch you? Every bleeding…”_

_“Don’t.” _Her eyes had met his. _“And I’m not excusing it. Anymore than I excuse myself for all the times I did it to you. Neither of us ever should. And I’m not saying I don’t have to avoid remembering it whenever we’re together; just like I’m sure you have to avoid thinking, sometimes, about the times I’ve hurt you. I’m just saying… that I finally understand. And I’m so, _so_ sorry, Spike.”_

He hadn’t been able to form words at this utterly overwhelming upheaval that was the retread of that awful, illuminating turning point of a year in their lives. So he hadn’t said anything. And when she pulled him up by the hands, he had gone, and joined her in her chair. Folded his arms around her shoulders, let her slide a hand against his head to pull him close to her. They had remained together for a moment while he’d murmured her name. 

_“You can do this,”_ she’d finally told him, a statement filled with confidence. _“You don’t need my advice. You’ve been leading groups and controlling territories for decades. A lot longer than I’ve even been alive. You just lost faith in yourself. You wanna bounce ideas off me, obviously I’m down. But I don’t think you should sweat this one.”_

And it had gone down just fine, in the end. He supposed he wasn’t sure what he had been so concerned about. Maybe she was right, and his confidence had been torn all to bits by his time in dear old Sunnyhell. But. Just what the hell was being here in Hell-A doing to his golden goddess? 

He definitely did not want her to diminish herself in the name of demonic political expedience, nor yet out of some bizarre effort to keep herself from eclipsing him or some sodding thing. Not that anyone would listen to a court with a supposed human sitting on it; not here where being the Slayer carried precisely zero weight. But being here where the only action she got was their nightly forays to gather up survivors was having its effect on her. She was stewing too much in the past, dredging up too much guilt over things they couldn’t change. Not that he didn’t appreciate her efforts to set things right between them, but he was starting to think this unaccustomed broodiness on the Slayer’s part might have something to do with a hell dimension’s effects on the human mind. 

Vacation or no and nice bit of nesting aside, they needed to get her the fuck out of here and back to where she could be her sodding self again. 

Not that he minded having her at his back as a quiet counselor while he worked out how to rule, or whatever the hell he was attempting to do in this bizarre hell-realm. But aside from his concerns about her mental health, having her here came with its own set of complications. Like… his girls were all in a tizzy about his having a favorite; especially a purported ‘human’, and one brought in from the outside. Made them feel inadequate to his needs, he thought, and maybe made them wonder what his malfunction was. Whether maybe he was some kind of self-hating demon, that he was so taken with a human bird and that. And, well, maybe it had, in fact, begun that way, but… they didn’t know all the history. That there was more to it than that. 

They could never realize that there was just no possibility of any other order to the universe if he had the remotest chance of lying with Buffy, and earning her love. None at all in the fucking nine hundred hells. 

And Maria… He liked the chit’s spirit, but she was going to be a sodding problem. She somehow clearly felt supplanted—as if she had ever owned the top spot—and never ceased hovering around corners to pop up and try to seduce him, as if he weren’t owned as a bleeding notch-eared pig. Buffy might as well have his balls in a jar on the drawing room shelf; had for years, whatever he might like to pretend. The Slayer was showing enormous restraint in deference to his carefully-carved-out position, actually, in not having sliced the nosy little bint’s head off by now, the way Maria wandered about needling her at every turn. But knowing his bird, at some point Buffy was going to take matters into her own hands. 

Was it dead piggish of him that he hoped he’d be there for the fight? Wouldn’t half turn him on to watch his woman take Maria apart. Not that he wouldn’t mourn the girl. She was a useful fighter, and loyal. But when it came to sides, it was clearly Buffy every time… and God knew it wasn’t a question who’d win in a fight. Maria might have _fifteen_ legs and Buffy could still take her with one arm trussed up behind her and her eyes bound up. 

“What are you thinking about?”

“Hmm?” He glanced over at his goddess, walking beside him looking like death and sex incarnate as she stalked purposely at his shoulder, and Christ, what had he ever done to earn even half what they had right now? “Oh. Nothing. Political rubbish.” Speaking of which, he had heard a few more interesting rumors of late, but one of them he wasn’t sure he wanted to share with her. It might help her to relax a bit about the fates of certain of their fellow maroons out here, but it might also be cause for concern, or even ultimately distract from their current relations. 

This latter was always, by his reckoning, a terrible notion.

Still, best not to go down the paternalistic road with one Buffy Summers. For one thing, he respected her far too much for all that. She was his partner, not someone to be protected from life. And if the way she’d had balls for breakfast with that bloody Council of Wankers was any indication, a man had to step lightly with her before giving her anything but full disclosure on any subject. 

As if he’d ever try. He wanted her exactly the way she was, no matter how worried he was about the pressure it might put on her already troubled mind. He just had to trust in what they were building here. That he wouldn’t lose her to the prat, knowing what he was about to tell her. 

Her low, mischievous voice interrupted his thoughts. “C’mon. I found this in a store down the road when we patrolled last.” As they slipped into their suite and Spike closed the door behind them, Buffy held up a small, dark object she had held concealed in the palm of her hand and shot him a tiny, challenging smile. “I know I’m not Dawn, but if you dare to put yourself in my hands…”

He groaned a little, briefly but utterly distracted. “Always, pet.”

A few minutes later and a little preparation and he was stretched out on the bed with his arms behind his head, surveying her with fascination while she hovered near his knees, an expression of endearing concentration on her face that was, interestingly, not unlike the Bit’s, as she carefully swiped and wiped at his nails with the bitty brush. It was, for the record, loads more soothing and significantly less ticklish than when Dawn did it… and he felt bizarrely pampered to be reclining here while the Slayer did him so.

He almost hated to ruin it, but if he didn’t he’d lose all relationship credit. He prized what they were building far more than he prized this little slice of weird domesticity, so… /Fuck you anyway, you ponce/ he cursed inwardly, and waded into the fray. “Did you hear the latest?” 

And prayed that she would still be with him come the morning.

***

What ever could Spike be talking about, one wonders...  
Find out next week in the ongoing adventures in 'will they end up living in this damned place', hehe.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few POV-switches in this one, indicated in the usual fashion. Some fun couple-y, nesting stuff and titillation before we get to a nice cliffhanger.
> 
> "Trampoline" by Shaed is a good song for this nesting period, IMO

(B)  
  
“The latest about what, this time?” Buffy leaned back a little on one elbow from where she was painting Spike’s toenails—incidentally an occupation she would never in her life have thought she would have taken up with one William the Bloody, slayer of Slayers—in an attempt to shoot him a querying look.

Spike appeared to be doing his impression of an unbreathing statue for a sec before he spoke up again. “Your ponce of an ex is somehow pretending to be a vamp still.”

Arrested by that, she remained in position for a moment, tiny paintbrush suspended over his foot. “Wow. He really did heal fast if he’s able to… What, did he find some spell that can fool demons or something?”

The exhale, when it came, brought words that sounded oddly relieved, as if her reaction was not what he had expected at all. “Ruddy likely. Hope so for his sake, or he’ll be found out right quick, yeah?”

She turned her hand a little to glance at the now-healed scar on her palm. As she did so, gravity took effect, and a drop of black nail polish escaped the brush to slither down along the heel of her hand and plop down onto the arch of Spike’s finely-boned, naked foot.

“Oi! Buffy, that’s meant to get on the nails, yeah, not on…”

“Sorry. It’s just…” She hurriedly slipped the brush back into the bottle and wiped away the offending drop with a little bit of TP, then frowned again at the scar while she scrubbed the remainder off of her hand. “I guess the spell really did work, then.” She shook her head finally and tossed the scrap of tissue away from her into the waiting nearby receptacle, stolen from the bathroom. “Even when he’s human he manages to get blood out of me.” It came out ruefully, if to no one in particular.

She was shaken off onto her side as Spike jolted up into a full sitting position, and the blood-bond flared with an abrupt, humming tension. “He got _what_ out of you, Slayer? What spell?” There was a dangerous note underlying the question that made his voice slide into those low, gravelly tones that always seemed to come out whenever she was under attack, and, oh hell.

“It wasn’t…”

Of course, he was already inspecting her neck, as if that even made any sense… and as if he hadn’t tasted, smelled, and seen every inch of it—and the rest of her—in the last few weeks, the idiot. “He’s not a vampire anymore, Spike,” she reminded him steadily. /You perfect idiot./ And she lifted her hand to show him the thin scar he had probably utterly disregarded before now, considered some kind of unmentioned battle damage or something.

She wasn’t sure she had ever seen his face go so dark with rage. “Bleeding Christ; you gave your blood to that arsehole again to save him?”

“Okay, you know what? It worked, didn’t it? It got me back here a lot faster than…”

“Was the fucking bastard even _grateful?”_

Her mind flitted traitorously back to her last day at Wolfram and Hart, and her realization of how long Angel had been milking her presence… all the while still talking to Cordelia in his fevered nightmares. “More or less,” she answered grimly. “Till I tried to leave.”

She swore she could hear Spike grinding his teeth, sighed as she laid a quietening palm on his thigh. “You’re going to starve to death if you wear off all your pointies.”

That caught his funnybone; at least enough to yank his attention back to the present. “Bugger my teeth, Slayer. You realize that buggerin’ grandsire of mine has managed to get you to…  
  
“I volunteered both times,” she interrupted to remind him, firm and unyielding. “And this time he didn’t even know I could do it. But it did confirm something for me that…” She sat back, feeling a little uncomfortable. “Well, I guess maybe you can pat yourself on the back, since it probably means you were right all along about me being all demon-girl.”

He pushed himself up on the heels of his hands to stare at her, clearly at a complete loss. “Beg pardon, luv?”

She managed a sort of half-shrug with one shoulder as she carefully screwed the cap down on the black nail polish and put it aside for the moment. Let the precise little movements absorb her so that she didn’t have to look him directly in the eye. “Something the Scourge said, before I came to you. Actually it was the reason I came to get you, kind of indirectly.”

“You know I’m not following you at all, don’t you Buffy?”

She made a sour face. “You know that whole thing with the dancing metal shapes and the First Slayer?”

“The shadow-play, yeah I bloody remember it. Remember fighting the arse of an exchange beastie they sent through, too.”

“Yeah, well…” She struggled with it, not particularly wanting the ‘I told you sos’. Not that he didn’t deserve to get a few in edgewise, but still. “It sounds like probably it was a vampire’s demon they used to infuse the First Slayer. Whatever. Turn her into whatever it was they did to her so that it would pass through the line. Which explains why I only feel vampires. I don’t feel Veruca demons, or Khrezgids, or anything else. I had to meditate, pump up my other senses, all that—which, by the way, are all pretty intense, kind of like a vamp’s, when you think about it—to learn to sense them.” She was still managing not to really look at him. “But I don’t feel them the way I feel you. They don’t… get me keyed up the way a vamp does in a fight, don’t make me feel alive the same way. Which makes sense, when you think of how much more dangerous vamps must have been to humans early on; so if you were gonna fight fire with fire…”

“Buffy…”

She couldn’t let him interrupt her. Not now. “The Scourge guy said it was like breeding a sheepdog with wolf DNA so that she could sense and fight the wolves better to protect the sheep… except the problem was, the more time the sheepdog spends around the wolves and survives, the more she realizes she has more in common with them than she does with the sheep.” Her voice started to shake a little. “And sometimes, when the sheepdog dies a few times and gets that cosmic suntan I told you about, some of the parts of her that were domesticated… start to die off, and the wolfy parts get more concentrated. And then it gets a lot harder to ignore it when the wolves…” She looked down. “Or, I guess, the dead guys, are, you know, handing out free advice on how to navigate life when you’re trying to figure out how to come back from the dead. And then…”

“Buffy. Oh, hell. You know you can’t trust a thing the Scourge says, right?”

Her head snapped around to glare at him. “Can you sense me when I walk into a room?”

He jolted a little, and a tinge of doubt touched his eyes. Hardened. “Buffy, you’re the Slayer. A’ course I can. But that’s a matter of survival, yeah? You’re the bigger predator to me; it’s not about…”

“Am. I. Different. Than. Other. Humans.” It wasn’t a question.

He hissed from between his teeth. “You know you are,” he answered, low and harsh. “But dammit, Buffy, that’s ‘cause you’re more dangerous, alright? You’re not food. You could take me down in an instant, so to me you feel like danger, like excitement; you make my blood boil, you put me on my toes, you…”

She shivered. It was the moment of truth. “And am I different now than I was before?”

He went very, very still. As if she were trying to trap him in a lie. “Buffy.”

/No. You’re not getting out of this./ “Tell me the truth, Spike.”

He remained incredibly still for a very long moment, then… “You didn’t feel like a predator when you came back. You felt…” And, his face a sudden, sickly shade of pale, he closed his eyes over his worried blue gaze.

“I felt less like a human… or even a Slayer.” She remembered Angel’s words from the phone call to LA, before. “More like another vampire, didn’t I? But still different?”

Spike was shaking his head, and his eyes snapped open. “You’ve got to understand, luv; when I said you came back wrong I was just trying to get a rise out of you. Wanted to you feel what I felt. That we had something. Something in common; something I could use to keep you close to me. I would’ve said _anything_ if it meant I got to touch you. If I’d known you were gonna take it this close to heart for so bloody long I would’ve kept my trap shut. I should’ve never…”

“Spike.” The single syllable was enough to cut him off like water at a tap. “You’ve never said word one to me that wasn’t the unvarnished truth. It’s one thing I’ve always valued about us. You’ve always shot straight from the hip with me; no matter how bad it hurts to hear. And having that mirror has helped me more than I can ever tell you, so don’t hold back now. What do I feel like; to you, now?”

His eyes opened on hers, hesitant and pained. “I don’t bloody know, Buffy. I’ve been too twisted up about you for too buggerin’ long. I dunno how much is thinkin’ I feel what I want to feel, and how much is my soul getting’ in the way and thinkin’ we’re perfect mates, somehow; just a couple of broken people tryin’ to be the gold in each other’s _kintsugi_…”

/Each other’s what, now?/

“…And how much is because of the blood-bond buggerin’ everything up; and the missin’ you, and the fire, and for all I bloody know I got some of your bleedin’ DNA mixed in with me when I dusted into that soddin’ crystal so when I came back you’re a part of me.”

/Oh, God…/ She’d never even thought of that, and her eyes flickered away to the patch of scarred skin on her palm. To the burn scar on his hand. And wondered how much of him she had in her now, too, baked right into her flesh. /Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, blood to blood./ Maybe that might even explain the serious intensity of the blood-bond. The emptiness of her life without him, like a part of her had been missing. Because maybe it really _had_ been. God knew some random crap she’d done before she’d come to LA that had been crazily Spike-like; like drinking herself to sleep on grappa and throwing bottles.

He was marginally different too, maybe? More leaderly, more thoughtful in a less retiring way than he had been in that last, souled year at the house, and woah. What a thing to consider. 

“All I know is, however you came back, I came back even more yours than I ever was before, so I don’t think it matters a single whit what you are, Buffy. What matters is I’m yours; balls to bone. In any incarnation.” And then his mouth dissolved from incredible tension to that slow, soft smile he saved for moments of intense sharing. “And that if you’re going to go around using metaphors for yourself, I like wolves and sheepdogs a hell of a lot better than whatever the hell it was you were spouting off to Peaches about cookie dough. I’m not sure I even _want_ to know what the bloody fuck that was about.”

Exasperation took her, lightening the moment. “Okay, you know what? I don’t think I’m ever going to tell you, then.” 

“Thank Maloker for small favors.”

“Whoever that is.” With a little sigh, she gave in for the moment to lay her head on his thigh.

He snorted, hand moving out of its own accord to stroke down along her hair. “I know Rupes could never force you to read a soddin’ thing, Buffy, but you should bloody well know who Maloker is.”

She let the old complaint flow right over her head. “Yeah, I know. I’m a terrible disappointment as a Slayer. No book-learning.”

“Oh, you make up for it in other ways, pet. You can hand out the ass-kickings like no Slayer I’ve ever fought; but if you’re supposed to be part vampire, you’ve just ruined that illusion. ‘Who’s Maloker’…” He trailed off, muttering in dark amusement.

Diverted, she pushed herself back up onto her elbow to face him. “If I’m not… I mean, if _we’re_ not, then why would the Scourge even be _after_ us? All of us? I mean, they only go after half-breeds, right?”

She had him there, and she knew it. His hand paused, dropped helplessly to his lap. “Hell if I know, Buffy. Maybe you’re just strong enough now to wipe their useless arses out. And good sodding riddance to the buggers if you do, I say. They can talk purity all day if they want, but they’d even do Little Shiva if they saw her as she is now, in her Fred shell; and an Old One is as pure a demon as you can get. They might even have tried to knock off our pal Glory, just ‘cause she shared space with that pulser Ben…”

“Where were they when we needed ‘em?” Buffy wondered aloud, with mild regret. 

“Yeah,” Spike answered a little grimly. “S’pose we could’ve used them instead of those bleedin’ horseboys, innit?” He flicked his fingers as if throwing away the past. “All I’m sayin’ is, they aren’t what you’d call reasonable. Fanatics never are. If they’d try to do a hellgod, they’re not gonna care whether it makes a whole bloody lot of sense that they’re goin’ after you and your lot of bitty Slayers, innit?”

“I guess,” she answered, and picked at the sheet. There was a tiny spot of dried nail polish there; just a speck, but it bothered her, pearled up as it was on the ruby, satin blend. “I feel pretty terrible that I just left them all to face… that, and I’m here basically living in…”

“Hell,” he pointed out, reasonably enough.

She lifted her head, planted her gaze firmly on his. “No. I mean, yeah, I know it is, technically, but…” She really felt like an idiot saying it. Like he was going to laugh, or look at her with one of his uber-indulgent expressions, but… “Is it bad that I’m almost enjoying myself, here?” She darn-near mumbled it, and it really was bad, wasn’t it? Did that weigh in even harder on the side of ‘you’re probably part demon’ on the whole scales of evidence thing, that she was more and more kind of liking living in a hell dimension? /Or at least I’m definitely enjoying it a hell of a lot more than I was getting anything out of life back home./ “I mean, just for the whole, not having horrible Slayer-dreams all the damn time for the first time since I was fifteen, and the not having to be the in-charge-person all the time, and the not having to be the one everyone looks at when things go wrong…” 

She shot him a hunted, apologetic look, because, well, he’d kind of had to take the brunt of that for her, so insensitive much? But he was just watching her with a strangely gentle expression. “And, I dunno, all this downtime, and the normal full ‘nights’ of sweet-dreamy sleep, and the having my vamp with me in the daytime, and all this no-guilt snuggle-time…” The words choked in her throat as she realized how it sounded. “God. I’m not saying I’m _glad_ it happened, and obviously it’s terrible for all the people who are trapped here. And I’m gonna keep working to help turn it around, because all these _people_…” Her head jerked up defensively. “I’m not a monster!”

“Christ, Buffy, will you shut it before you hurt yourself?” And before she knew what was happening Spike had his hands on her shoulders, was pulling her close to stare into her face. “You’re not a bloody demon, alright, no matter what those Scourge blighters told you! If you’re enjoying being here, it’s only because it feels familiar! You spent how much of your bleedin’ teen years on a hellmouth; and not even a standard one at that! You’re not used to livin’ a normal life. And we’re just gettin’ ourselves back on an even keel. Don’t you think I’m scared, wonderin’ if we can keep it up if we ever get out of here? This is a bleedin’ honeymoon for us; and yeah, I know how ironic that sounds, but maybe we’re both just that twisted up.” 

She tried to flinch away, but he just held on tighter, his voice going low and rumbly as he hit about fifteen on the intensity-meter. “But I’m in your blood now, and you’re in mine; and there’s no way I’m lettin’ you go now, no matter if we get out of here or not. So we fight, yeah? We fix this bleedin’ mess… and then we figure out how to go on from there.” And his hands loosed her shoulders with an abruptness that staggered her. “Because if we can face down demon lords and Old Ones with multiple personalities and neuroses about humans and fucking _Maria_…”

She choked out a laugh through the tension.

“…Then you know we sure the hell are gonna face down the Scoobies and your wanker of an ex-Watcher and whoever else wants to have an opinion, after. Yeah?”

She looked down, shivering a little. Outside their room, the shrieks and howls of terror and pain went on; a constant song of unrequited agony they had both long since learned to drown out until they could saddle up and help some more. “What about the quiet?” she asked softly. “It’s so quiet, back home. It almost made me crazy.”

He held out his burnt hand, caught hers with it. “It’s quiet here,” he answered, and his renewed nail polish glimmered with ocher highlights in the low, acid light. “Here, between us, it has been since you came back.”

It had been, mostly. They had built a peaceful place within the cacophony… and they had learned to live well in it, with each other. They had built a warm place here, where they could communicate, and love. So maybe… Maybe they did know how to do normal, and quiet, in their own way.

And when the world came knocking out there, back home; loud and pulsing…

He was what she wanted. He was why she had come back for him. Because he was the support she required. The one who had never left her. Who had come back to her even after death. Who had waited for her to recognize that he was the one thing she needed, and held his heart pure for her. She could…

She could trust that. 

There would be battles. But the fights might be all outside, there. And they were _good_ at those. 

She squeezed back. “I guess… everyone’s going to see something new when we find our way out of here, huh?”

His eyes twinkled on hers, sparked like a cheery blaze catching. “Slayer, I’m right certain there’s never been anything like you and me.”

***

(S)  
  
He was enjoying it more than he ought ever to admit, watching Buffy—his mate—adding touches to the suite to make it theirs. It gave him a thrill of utter delight and sheer contentment merely to sit back and watch her twitch about moving items around, or to see little additions to the rooms as she brought things in, made her presence a part of the suite the way she had never done to his crypt, never allowed him to do at Revello. He had been a ghost in her home even when he’d been in the basement—low impact at best, afraid he might overstep if he was anything more than transitory—and she, when they’d had their affair before, had made sure to take every scrap of herself with her when she’d left every assignation. Anything of her he might have kept in his nest before, he’d nicked.

To watch her here, poking about making their space a home for the both of them and getting the rooms set to rights the way she wanted them made him want to run about shouting, made him want to leap on her and bite her, drag her off and shag her, or possibly weep like a wet fucking nancy, or… Who the bloody hell knew. Just disintegrate.

Nothing could happen to make this go wrong. Nothing. “I think we each need a safeword, Buffy.”   
  
She didn’t turn, mind clearly elsewhere and voice contented as she nested with him. “A what?”

He hesitated, but it needed to be said. “A word that for sure means no, and we both know it. Or at least, ‘slow down and listen’, yeah?” He saw her freeze, go taut. “Never had that, have we?”

She looked up slowly, attention fully arrested, and her expression turned pained. “No,” she answered softly. “We didn’t.”

“No was yes for us for too long,” Spike went on softly. 

“For both of us,” she agreed, and then looked away. “Till it wasn’t. For both of us.”

Such troubled ground. “And no way to tell the difference.”

“Yeah.”

He sure the hell didn’t want this conversation to break her. Either of them; but it needed to be had. “So that’s right out. Best if it’s something neither one of us would say in any other circumstances, yeah? So we’d know it without question?”  
  
She blinked up at him at that, surprised. “Like what?”

/Alright, I can’t do all the sodding work here!/ “Hell if I know, Buffy. Red and bloody yellow for all I care, long as it works.”

She rolled her eyes at him, equanimity apparently restored by the puzzle of it all. “I can imagine saying those.” She paused thoughtfully, nose wrinkled in an honestly adorable fashion as she considered it. “How about—for me anyway—‘Snuffleupagus’?”

Whatever he had expected from her, it sure the bleeding hell wasn’t _that_. “You’re out of your bug-shaggin’ mind. What the bloody fuck…”

She pulled a winsome sort of face at him. “Look. Don’t diss my word. You wanted something I wouldn’t say for any other reason, so there you go.” She gave a decisive little nod. “I like my word. And besides… it’s totally unsexy, so you know for sure…”

“Oh, hell yes it is, and I hope to Christ I never hear it for more than one reason now.”

“Okay, your turn. Whaddaya got?”

Put on the spot, he blinked, taken aback. “Er…”

“Oh, I see how it is. You totally came at this conversation unprepared, didn’t you?”

Might as well admit that he had. “Look, you…”

“Let’s see what you pull out of your ass. If it’s better than ‘Snuffleupagus’…”

“I’m bloody well begging you to never say that again, Buffy, if you love me.”

She leveled him with her gaze. “Unless I need to…”

He sighed heavily. “Well, yeah. Unless you need to. Otherwise, keep it out of your sodding vocabulary. Christ.” Groaning, he covered his eyes with his hand and rocked back in the seat to stare at the ceiling of the suite, wondering just how the sodding seven hells he’d gotten himself into this idiot conversation. Safety words, for a fucking vampire. Jesus H. blue-balling Christ. “Hell. How about…” He trailed off, lost for inspiration.

“I’m waaaaiting…”

“Pettish wench.”

“Whatever the hell that means.”

With a frown, he lifted his head to pin her with a glare. “Podsnappery.”

_“Excuse_ me?”

He stuck out his chin pugnaciously. “You don’t need to know what it means. You just need to recognize it.”

“Okay, that’s so not fair. You know where mine came from.”

“Sure. Some sort of puppet rodent from the degenerate age of modern telly…”

“I think he’s a woolly mammoth or something, actually.”

“Six of one. Muppet. Mine’s got a meaning, at least…”

“That you won’t tell me, which means it’s probably dirty, or maybe insulting. Speaking of degenerate things…”

He sighed and rolled his eyes in his turn. “It’s from when I was young as well, alright? And maybe some of the slang from my era was a bit degenerate in its turn, but that one wasn’t. It’s actually fairly apt, for all I wouldn’t use it anymore.”

“Alright?”

/Oh, bloody hell./ Embarrassed now, he spat it out with reluctance, feeling a mite trapped. “It just means… bein’ determined to ignore something inconvenient, and to be nobly resigned to a situation. To be all virtuous about it if something’s objectionable.”

Buffy turned away from where she’d been poking about the crockery. “Well, that makes sense I guess.”

“Said so.”

She mouthed the word, soundlessly, thank the holies. “Please don’t try to say it, Buffy.”

“Just trying to memorize it.” Padding over, she plopped herself on his lap. “Maybe we won’t ever have to use it, though. Which means I’ll have to remind myself what it is here and there so I don’t forget it. It’s a weird word.”

“Look who’s talking. Bringing sodding children’s programming to bed…”

She leaned over to kiss his throat. “I’m not right now. And I have no intention of doing so in the near future.”

/Well… alright then./ Seemed despite the gravity of the conversation, she felt a bit lighter for it.

He had to admit he did as well. 

***

(B)  
  
They were sparring in the wide-open spaces of the flat, pink-velvet-walled Rodeo Ballroom. With all the white, padded chairs pulled to the side and the large, round, white-clothed tables rolled up against one wall, the broad, carpeted space with its thick, soft padding was almost like gym mats. Perfect for falls and kick-throws, if a little rough on the shoulder when you tucked and rolled away from a solid punch to the face, came back to your feet, swung a nice right hook to a leering vamp face. 

He blocked it, of course, and they exchanged a little flurry that was mostly footwork and physical communication more than anything; a satisfying passage in which neither of them missed a blow or a block, and not one move was out of line or unexpected, missed, telegraphed, or dropped… because they knew each other too damn well sometimes for their fights to be anything less than wholly satisfying.

Until one of them tried something new. 

The high-kick had a new lead-in that brought her in straight-on, after a feint from the left, and for a wonder, took him by surprise. He careered backward, ‘arse over tits’, as he would put it, and grinned at her as he came back to his feet, dancing in his boots. Thumbed his nose a little to knock the tiny trickle of blood away, and tilted his head at her with an admiring expression. “Nice move, pet.”

“Thanks. I picked it up tussling with that Rhaegar the other night.”

“Missed that.” He paused to assess her lead, clicked his tongue lightly behind his teeth in that unfair way of his; and man, it was weird to face off with him without his duster. He just looked… incomplete without it. 

Not that it was a sad day any day to watch him ripple like that with his arms exposed, his t-shirt pasted to his chest with a patch of sweat borrowed from her when she’d rebounded off of him in their last little bit of close contact. He’d filled out a lot in the last two weeks, between the second donation—this time from a formerly-beefy, completely phlegmatic guy named Jose Mendez who was now probably completely questioning his sexuality—and their regular, ah… exchanges. “Yeah. It was good exercise. He almost got me, but then I remembered this thing Faith did last year against the Turok-Han, and…” 

Buffy frowned a little as an unwilling memory sprang to mind; Faith, snuggled up on Spike’s cot. The two of them, cozy as two peas with their heads together, sharing a cigarette…

Spike lunged unexpectedly, making her blood sing as she dodged utterly on instinct and swung, making for a crack toward the back of his neck. It was a crap move, but he’d caught her unawares. She even had to jump over a snapping side-kick she shouldn’t have had to avoid at all, he’d telegraphed it so obviously. Swung like a barn door, from his awkward position half under her arm, but with the way she was over-extended… 

Garbage. Pure garbage, and wow. He sure knew how to get her. “You did that on purpose.”

He grinned again, rolling his tongue and dodging away. “Saw how you looked at me when the bint was down there bumming a fag.” He tilted his head, looking more than a little curious. “What was that about, anyway? Know you’ve got some history with her, but if I’ve seen one like her I’ve seen a dozen. Knew my way around that one.”

“That’s my problem.” Surging forward and powered by a sudden rush of old, sickly rage long put to bed, she swept his leg and came up with an uppercut that should have rocked him back. 

He blocked her though, and kept a tight hold on her wrist while he leaned in close. “Not a problem at all. No mystery there. No challenge.” He let go of her and danced away again, biting his lip a little. His shoulders swayed back and forth as he opened his hands in clear invitation. “Now, a certain Goldilocks…”

/Oh, you bastard/ she thought; half angry, half amused, and well-aware she was being baited. And swung into a roundhouse kick that was apparently just as predictable as the last, since he caught her mid-swing, pulled her foot in till her knee was against his chest. His left arm locked around her calf while his right wrapped around the small of her back, trapping her against him.

She socked him hard in the face.

Of course he just kept grinning, as his fingers slid down along the back seam of her pants to find her through the crotch of the thin material.

Mouth open and working to remember to breathe, she forgot all about sparring. Or whatever the hell they had been talking about. “Oh…”

“Can’t imagine why you’re jealous of a bit of jaw between me and the chit, unless you know it was all about you…”

Oh. Right. That was what they had been talking about. 

Cue the struggling to get away. And she really should spend more time punching him in the face…

“That the problem, then?” he asked as his fingers continued their insistent assault, and damn him, he knew precisely how to short-circuit her brain. He had used his powers for evil often enough when they had first started this… and it was a gift he had apparently decided to resurrect in this moment to get his way. “You don’t fancy me talking about you with some other bird?”

She gave up all pretense at fight and dropped her head to his shoulder, clinging to the other one to stay upright. “I don’t… _fancy_… you spending _any_ time with a woman who… body-swapped with me and used… oh God… my body to fuck my boyfriend… for one thing.” His head rose, and his fingers paused. She hissed, breathing hard of his scent, fighting to stay in the present. With _him;_ and gratefully he took the hint, renewed his efforts. The returning stimulation made her shudder. “She tried to take my life once. If she tried to take _you_…”

“Never happen, luv. I set her to rights on that straight off.”

Shaking, she gave in to his ministrations, fighting to still herself against the onslaught. She wanted to ask, but she half didn’t want to know. 

“Yeah,” he answered the unspoken question. “She came on to me, pet. Then, a bit, and once before; when she was wearin’ your body, I’ve since figured out, as I expect you would ever have talked to me the way you did then, lookin’ back.” His fingers stroked in a slower rhythm for a moment, as if some long-carried grudge had faded away for him. “I told her how things were though, in not so many words. That it didn’t matter if we were… in the same place anymore or not. I wasn’t on the market for a notch on her bedpost. She moved on to Wood’s kid.”

Buffy shuddered against his hand, remembering Riley, who had been her lover once, and hadn’t been able to tell. And then there was Spike, who was her enemy in that time, and yet had still known her well enough to be confused. 

She lifted her face from his collarbone. “Kiss me.”

His eyes on hers looked into her soul. “Gladly.” He did, his hand still moving, and slipped back only enough to stroke a lock of damp hair away from her forehead. “Love dancing with you, Buffy. Dance with me some more?”

As they settled to the carpet Buffy reflected that sparring was a hell of a lot more fun in hell.

***

The whole idea behind their sparring in relative public these days had originally been, per Spike, that some of his people might watch and be convinced that she was deadly enough that they wouldn’t want to challenge her. It had kind of worked in the beginning in that they’d drawn a crowd the first few times, most of them looking forward to the spectacle of a nice smackdown. Buffy was glad that Spike was doing this now, when he was at full strength—or maybe a little more than, with all the systematic infusions of Slayer blood—so they would look as evenly-matched as possible. After all, it wouldn’t do to completely kick his ass here, in front of all his people. She knew he wouldn’t want her to pull her punches or anything, and luckily right now his speed was at its top gear, what with the more regular—and let’s not forget, _human_—feedings, so half the time she barely touched him to land a blow, much less something hard enough to potentially knock him through a window. 

She might also be a hair weaker here, she conceded privately, between the whole hell dimension thing and the regular bloodlettings, but she was in no way going to admit that, hoped like hell Spike hadn’t noticed it. Or maybe he had, but had attributed it first to a gentler Buffy and his own overall weakness, now to his returning (or possibly augmented) strength.

That was part of the problem, though, with this whole ‘do it for the crowds’ thing. It was convincing enough in that most of his demon girls saw this purported human holding her own against their vamp lord and even, on occasion, getting in some really hard knocks; once in a while even taking some and getting right back up again. It was enough to get the majority of them off her case. She even had the two green girls, Gris and Rinne, practically cozying up to her and asking to be on her team at this point, if in not so many words. The whole ‘go where the power lies’ thing. But. 

The hotness factor of sparring with a Spike at full strength? 

She had honestly completely forgotten, it had been so damn long. And before, when he had been like this, she had in no way been in any position to appreciate what she was getting. She had been a damn kid; juvenile, hopelessly in love with Angel, and mentally and emotionally incapable of recognizing her own reactions for what they were, though she could see them clearly in hindsight. /It’s called ‘turned the hell on’, Buffy. Look it up. It’s in the dictionary behind ‘Please take me now behind the nearest tomb, you evil thing you’./

Now, of course… 

Let it just be said that their sparring sessions tended to run very short. And mostly, that was her fault, because her attention tended to wander. Spike found it completely amusing, of course, the smug bastard. 

Which was where the whole ‘sparring in public’ plan kind of backfired, though, because at least when they did it up in the suite, the stuff that happened during and after the sparring wasn’t also totally public. 

But you know. Hell dimension. Sex happened. Most of the fascinated spectators had learned pretty quickly to view only part one of their ‘dances’, and then leave before part two. Unless they were heavily voyeuristic, she supposed. 

Buffy honestly didn’t want to think too much about that. Best to assume that no one was watching anymore by the end. The doors were usually closed whenever she looked up from the floor, or the wall, or whatever. If she didn’t see anyone, she could tell herself the viewing public had gone and found some other fascinating thing to do with themselves while she and her lusty vampire reminded each other that fighting was, really, in the grand scheme of things, just personalized foreplay.

The main point of the operation had failed, anyway. Yeah, the rest of Spike’s bevy of busty demon wenches were either sucking up hardcore or giving her a wide berth, now… but from the start Maria had been conspicuously absent from these little public displays of deadly affection. Which kind of made the whole thing moot. 

She was still going to have to fight the bitch. And no doubt it was going to be a hell of a lot less fun than fighting with Spike. Le sigh.

Speaking of. She was rounding the corner from the room where everyone kept the piles of scrounged clothing when she ran literally right into Spider-woman; probably heading that way to get herself a new shirt or something. The girls had hit every store on Rodeo Drive by now, which meant these basement rooms were stacked floor to ceiling with anything a woman’s heart could ever possibly desire when it came to designer clothes you could then wreck by wearing them in hell… or by having your vampire lover promptly tear them off of you in a bout of hot, post-sparring sex, and who knew Buffy would ever get to wear Versace slacks and Wang blouses on patrol? There were scraps of underwear by Donna Karan on the suite floor at this very moment. It was a weird life here in Hell-A. And she was apparently about to pay a toll for her insatiable sex life and her love of fashion. “Maria.”

The woman didn’t answer, though her dark eyes threw daggers.

Maybe there wouldn’t be an incident. “Sorry about that. It’s a big hallway.” She made to step around the girl. 

And was halted by a sudden _thud_ as a six-foot long, chitinous spider-leg shot out across the passage to fix itself in the drywall exactly three inches from her face. 

Buffy sighed inwardly. /Incident it is, then./ Too bad she didn’t have the axe on her. She could just chop off the legs and be done with it. “You wanted to talk?” she asked glibly.

“No,” Maria answered darkly. “I want you gone.”

Buffy couldn’t help it. She laughed out loud. “Listen. I know you were here first and all, but that’s just geography. I had dibs on Spike before you ever even heard his name. So how about we just save you from becoming a little eight-legged pancake under my shoe, I don’t have to break a sweat today—because I already got cleaned up—and we’ll call this a win for everyone.”

“He was mine, before you had to come along and ruin it.”

/Oh, for God’s sake./ “Look. I know you have some weird, demon-y idea that you put your stamp on him or something, but what happened between the two of you down here wasn’t a date, alright?” Rage, barely held back, threatening to froth over. “It wasn’t even something he _wanted_.” Maria’s eyes bulged, and no way was Buffy going to let her get a word in edgewise on that. She was so not ready for a debate on the ethics of nonconsensual sex with a demon. “Now, I get that you helped him and Illyria get free and take over, which is the only reason you’re not dead right now.” She glared at the appendage in front of her. “But I’m giving serious thought to breaking your leg, here, if you don’t get it out of my face.”

“You talk big, but you’re just a human. You don’t even have your cute little axe. You couldn’t take me. And there’s no way you could pleasure a demon lord like I could. You’re not even the right _species_.”

/Oh, please./ She was so bored right now. “I’ve fought hellgods, girl. I’ve defeated ascended Old Ones, master vampires and their nests of minions, computerized zombie soldiers; taken on a mind-blowingly powerful witch, an entire hellmouth full of Turok-Han uber-vamps, the hellmouth itself… and the First Evil. I’m pretty sure I can take a low-grade spider-demon with a crush on the vampire who’s fought at my side through more than half of those.”

The girl blinked at her, clearly nonplussed. “You’ve defeated…”

“A hellgod, yes. And an Old One, like Illyria; though he wasn’t in a human body when we did it. And I may have had help with a lot of those, including Spike, but...”

“You’ve defeated more demons than he has?”

Buffy frowned thoughtfully, taken aback. “Well, I suppose. He’s only been fighting demons in the last few years. Before that he was busy just doing the vampire thing. Till we started working together; and he wasn’t there for some of those, so… Probably.”

The spider-leg retracted abruptly, and now two large brown eyes were staring at her from under a nest of disheveled ringlets. “What are you?”

/Well, crap./ This was what happened when she got fed up and started talking too much. Though at least her reputation had apparently spread so that Maria had heard enough rumors about her skillset, sight unseen, to believe she was capable. “It doesn’t matter. At least, not here. What matters is, I’m not in the business of killing anything that doesn’t need killing. And Spike says he needs you on his team, Maria; so tell me right now. Do I need to kill you, or can you and I work together; for his sake?”

Maria must have seen something deadly in her eye. She actually trembled, visibly. And just as visibly backed down. “I told him I’d do whatever he needs me to do; from the start. If…” She shuddered a little. Looked away. “Is that how… you ended up owning him? Did you win him in a fight?”

Buffy jerked a little, startled at the question. Then, since the crisis seemed to be past, she folded her arms and gave the question the serious though it deserved. “You know,” she told the demon girl, “I think maybe it’s about time I asked him.” And with a nod, she slipped past the stymied creature to head back upstairs.

Spike was gearing up for another trip out to scope for civilians when she got to their room; flipping up the collar of a silk-blend purple button-down and tugging the lines straight over his black tee. His hair was newly gelled back out of his face; no longer the disheveled mess it had been directly after their last assignation, all the better to see past it into the murky orange daylight. He had apparently just stomped his way back into his boots, to judge from their unlaced state. “Did you find anything you like downstairs, pet?” he asked as without turning as she entered the room.

He had always been able to do that, long before there had been the blood-bond between them. She wasn’t sure if he was keyed into her scent, the sound of her footfalls, or… Heck, he probably had the peculiarities of her breathing and heartbeat memorized, knowing him; a thought which once would have freaked her out, even possibly disgusted her, but which now afforded her little more than a small shiver of pleasure. “I did.” She moved over to the sideboard, where he kept the liquor he had purloined from God knew where, and where she had last laid her axe. Fingered it slightly. “Ran into Maria on my way back.”

He turned abruptly, shoulders tense and expression tight. “She still alive?”

/Wow. Glad to know you have so much faith in me./ “We had… a conversation.”

A faint twist hit the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smirk, but possibly the hint of one. “Hack off all eight legs, did you?”

She considered throwing the axe at him. “No, I didn’t, dammit. Which I think showed a lot of restraint, since she had those legs all over you downstairs, and never lets me forget it for a second.”

His shoulders sagged a little, and he moved to take a seat, his elbows kicking back behind him automatically though he had no duster here to settle; a holdover from having worn that item, she thought, since the seventies. “Yeah, I’ll admit I’m even starting to get a bit tired of the chit prodding at you like she does.” He regarded her then, head canted slightly upward so that he could watch her from the corner of his eye. “So, why’s she still alive, then?”

With a sigh, Buffy left the axe behind to move to the seat across from him. Sat and unconsciously copied his posture, forearms on her knees. “She was just too ridiculous. All hot air. I didn’t need to use violence when just a few basic facts set her straight.”

A slow smile slid across Spike’s lips, making him look young and lovely and lighting his eyes so that they sparkled into hers. “Told her about a few of the nasties you’ve taken down in your time, did you pet?”

“I think she realized I wasn’t going to back down for her if I’d fought an Old One and a hellgod and the rest.” Buffy shrugged a little; a mere twitch of both shoulders where they hunched over her elbows. “She asked me what I was. I don’t think she knew how complicated a question that is…”

“It isn’t, though, Love.” His response was prompt, certain. “One hell of a woman, is what you are.”

She let her own smile slip free, if a quiet one. “I seem to remember hearing that once before, somewhere.”

“Yeah, well; happens to be the truth.” He leaned back then, sprawling in the chair with a finger to his lips. Flung that hand back then; an extravagant gesture of weary acceptance. “We have any damage control to do there, you think?”

She considered it. “No, I don’t think so. We’ll see how she handles things, but I didn’t tell her who I was back home. I basically said it didn’t matter what I was, that the point was I don’t kill what doesn’t need killing, and you wanted her on your team, so the ball was in her court. She backed down pretty quick after that.”

He made a sort of grunting noise as he absorbed that, though she could tell by the way his eyes looked away into nothing that he was relieved.

Into the silence that followed, Buffy focused directly on him. “She did say one thing that got me to thinking, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhm. She asked me if that was how I ended up owning you. If I won you in a fight or something.” 

His head jerked back, eyes catching on hers with the beginnings of real amusement. In return she kept her gaze firm on his, questioning. “You did say,” she went on with a tiny smile, “something about being all mine since the first day you ever saw me? That kind of comment tends to make a girl real curious.”

He narrowed his eyes at her from where he sat back in the chair. “Couldn’t bleeding kill you, could I? No matter what I sodding did. And you just stood there; shouldn’t’ve been let out on your own yet, no bloody discipline, no real style…”

“Hey!”

He lifted his scarred brow at her, demanding honesty. And, if she was to look back at her high school self, compare how she did the job then to how she did it now… he kind of had a point. She had relied a whole hell of a lot on predisposition, then, and blown off nearly every one of Giles’ attempts to get her to train, to meditate, to focus…

Heck, she hadn’t even patrolled every night till she’d come out to her Mom. “You try to hide a secret identity from a parent and keep up with regular schoolwork, and then talk to me about discipline.”

He just watched her as if she were something he had never seen before, eyes hearkening back into the past. “But you had it, even then, Buffy. You had that fire and that power and that instinct; more than some of them have after years of study and hard work. And you had that ability to think on your feet comes from not bein’ caged in by someone else’s idea of how to do the work, yeah?” His eyes on hers had turned thoughtful. “Think maybe that bit’s stood you in good stead over the years. Havin’ to improvise. Made you bloody unpredictable. Maybe as unpredictable as me.” He tapped his fingers on his chair-arm in apparent remembered frustration. “Sodding embarrassing how many times I tried to take you out, you and your little school chums, and couldn’t manage it. You got under my skin so’s I couldn’t even sleep at night...”

“You sleep in the daytime,” she reminded him with a little smile, feeling warmed at his recital. He was such a dork when he forgot, mid-rant, that he was a damn vampire.

He flicked his fingers at her in clear dismissal of that consideration. “Drove Dru crazy, yeah? The amount of time I spent obsessing over you. Couldn’t figure out how you kept beating me. Drove me half mad, till...” He shrugged, still in his habitual casual slouch, as if writing it off. “It hit me I never really wanted to. That I was enjoying the game.” His lips twisted a little. “Was Dru made me see it. Hurt her that I couldn’t do it. She knew then, even if I didn’t, that I was already gone over you.”

/Really? That far back?/

“Didn’t believe it m’self, of course.” He leaned forward, then, hands clasped between his knees and eyes on hers. “And then I came back. Saw the woman you’d become. How you’d bloomed into this disciplined, tempered warrior, hurting and needing someone… and I was lost. Didn’t know it yet, but knew I didn’t want to damage you anymore. Didn’t want to do sod all to hurt you, ever...”

Him showing up when she was in pain, shotgun in his hand. Ready to make her go away so he just didn’t have to think about it anymore; the way her just existing was destroying everything he was. 

And then, instead, sitting beside her on her back porch. Awkwardly patting her shoulder, and just… being there. Her enemy. Trying to help, and _why? _That question had haunted her for months, until she had finally learned the—at that time—horrifying answer.

“…Would do anything, say anything to make you _see_ me. Because without raising a bloody hand to do me in, Buffy, you’d bought and owned me.” His eyes glowed on hers. “Just by bein’ you, yeah?”

It was enough to rattle anyone; even someone as hard as Buffy had once tried to be. But she had softened up considerably in the last months, and now shook her head, looking down at her feet between her hands. She was wholly unsure what to do with any of that except… She was still worried. Because if it hadn’t been for so many interventions… Would she even have what she had today? And all of them had been so bad for him. All of it had… “Why…” She hadn’t realized she was whispering till she heard her own voice. “Do you think you realized it because you weren’t with Drusilla anymore? Or because of the spell Willow did? Or…” She hated herself for asking, but she’d always wondered. Always knew she’d have to ask sometime. “If it wasn’t for the chip, do you think we’d have ever…”

He was on his feet and pacing, looking away out into the endless afternoon of Hell-A. And then he was swinging back around to glare at her. “It wasn’t the sodding chip, Buffy! All that did was force me to be around you till I couldn’t stand it anymore; but I was already a goner, yeah? Dru left me because of you. Said she could smell you all over me. That I would end in ashes, ‘cause the sunlight had claimed me or some rubbish of hers…”

/Oh, God…/ “She knew.” The words fell out of her mouth before Buffy could censor them, on one stolen breath.

Spike frowned, arrested mid-stride. And he sank back to the chair again, clearly startled. “Yeah, I guess she did. But then she always had bloody clear visions, give her that.” 

A shiver ran through Buffy; a premonition, almost. “Was it a vamp thing? The visions?”

Spike looked startled. Shook his head briefly, pondering it. “No. They were a part of her before she was turned.” His voice went quiet, thoughtful. “Used to wonder why she was the way she was. How she got the Sight, since they always came true. They haunted her; wrecked her. Angelus said he took her because she had them; because it meant she was ‘a chosen one of God he had to despoil’…”

/Oh… God./ It was all coming together, in a way that she really wished it wasn’t. And it explained so damn much… “Were they dreams, sometimes, or did they always happen for her when she was awake?” The question felt dragged from her, and she asked it even though half of her really didn’t want to know the answer.

Spike’s head jerked back toward her, his eyes coming back from the past. Clearly he was confused as to why the sudden interest in his ex’s trauma, but he seemed to sense she was going somewhere with it, and as always, he was willing to follow where she led. “Both. Half the time it seemed like she was only half-awake, yeah? Like she went into a funny place, and came out seein’ things that came true…”

“Like a meditation,” Buffy murmured. Frowned thoughtfully. “An instinctive one, kind of automatic…” The pieces fell reluctantly into place in her mind, and she didn’t want to believe it, didn’t even want to _think_ it, but… “She was weirdly strong, Drusilla; wasn’t she? And yet weirdly sick all the time, right? Like being a vampire somehow was… wrong for her? Some kind of state that didn’t quite mesh with her being, or something?” It might explain, as much as anything, why the vamp queen was always so cray-cray, and oh god, just the thought of it was...

There was being infused with some part of a demon, way back in the past so that it was just a part of how you functioned. A part of who you were. But the thought of being _invaded_ by one, on top of all that… 

Just thinking of it made Buffy feel beyond violated.

When she looked up Spike was staring at her as if she had lost her mind. “What are you saying, Buffy?”

She didn’t want to believe it; no longer doubted it when she met his eyes. “I think if we ever get out of here we’ll have to ask Giles how good the Watchers Council actually was at tracking down their Potentials back in the 1800s.” Spike jerked, looking stunned. “Maybe you _always_ had a thing for Slayers, William.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as something occurred to her belatedly. “Maybe that’s _why_, if you were sired by one.”

“Bleeding fucking Christ.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to help him deal with this possible revelation… or if, indeed, there was anything at all she _could_ say. She was kind of rocked by it too, considering that if it was true, it gave her a highly uncomfortable kinship to his crazy vamp ex that she would rather not think about. One that would require her, the next time they crossed paths—which she knew would happen, because it would always happen—to deal with the woman not with deadly precision, and not even with mercy, for Spike’s sake, but with actual _empathy_.

/Oh, crap./

At length, and still looking somewhat lost, Spike opened his mouth. God alone knew what he was going to say, but they never had the chance to find out. A vast, pained roaring shook the room, rattling the windows, sounding as if it came from directly overhead. A gout of fire shot past the lintels of the windows, blackening the top rail of their balcony with soot. 

They were under attack.

Their eyes met in shocked surmise as adrenaline flooded Buffy’s body and shut off her brain to all other considerations. She was moving before she realized it, hand sweeping the axe from the sideboard as she headed to the scarred suite door. Spike was right at her back, the blood-bond perking with battle-readiness. 

As they pounded down the hall and around to the fire escape that led to the roof, they were met by, of all people, Maria, who gasped out a message with wide eyes. “It’s the dragon! The one who brought you!” And this was, surprisingly, directly addressed to Buffy before her eyes turned back to Spike. “The Azure Queen is attacking it, Boss! We couldn’t stop her…”

“Buggering hell,” Spike cursed, and ran harder. 

/Not an attack, just a visit, oh God/ Buffy thought, redoubling her speed to match his. /What if that’s _Angel?/_

If it was, in his current state Illyria could easily kill him before he even had a chance to convince her that this wasn’t an invasion and he was in fact still the person she remembered. 

***  
  
  
  
Will Illyria kill Angel, thinking he's an imposter? Do we honestly care if she does? What new revelations await Buffy this week in the ongoing 'getting to actually know Angel' show?   
  
We'll also, let me tantalize, shortly learn a few more things about Buffy's 'purpose' here. Not sure if that will break down to next chapter or the one after, depends on word-count. Next chapter, though... EEE, been waiting for that one for EVAR. So excited for it...


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this one really makes people happy. It's been a LOOOOONG time coming. A BLOODY long time.  
Angel just can't stop digging himself nice holes in which to bury his own ass. Hehe. *bounces*
> 
> The songs for this chapter, in case anyone wants to know it, are:
> 
> Spike: "Beyond Beautiful" (Aerosmith)  
Buffy: "Take A Bow" (Madonna)

When they got to the roof it was to ascend directly into the scene of a nightmare. Illyria had her hands drawn back, a ball of what looked like pure, sapphire light gathering there like she was able to throw it or something; because why should this dimension _not_ feel like they were in some cheesy video game that Andrew and Jonathan would love, and since when could Illyria do _that?_ In the face of this attack the dragon had reared up in self-defense and had its neck snaked to protect something—or someone—on its back. Its massive mouth was agape, and, just, wow. Fire was literally _roaring_ from its jaws to engulf the Old One. Except; okay. The flames seemed not to touch the blue woman, parting around her in some kind of weird bubble like the Red freaking Sea. 

Illyria didn’t even seem all that perturbed. She wore some kind of teeth-clenched expression of sheer determination on her lips as she waited out the blast, and her leather clothes—if you could call them that—weren’t even smoking. 

The moment the fireball died out, Miss Old One 2004 began calmly thrusting her arms forward, and oh my God, the dragon was so going to die. Buffy was having visions of it falling backward off the roof, a very human Angel toppling with it, four-plus stories straight down to break in half all over again on the grounds of the Pink Palace…

Before she could even think to act Spike was moving; had thrown himself in between his co-ruler and the dragon. Had grabbed the leather-clad arms, to the possible detriment of life and limb; and now the vision changed, and Buffy was seeing another, even more devastating loss pass before her eyes. The possibilities flashed; her man going up like so much vampiric kindling, in one easy gout of dragonfire. His being engulfed in one of Illyria’s blue energy balls. 

Burning again.

Losing him. And this place becoming, abruptly, a true hell.

“Illyria, stop!” Spike’s voice, tuning in from some place far away. “Just stop, yeah? It’s Angel! It’s Angel up there on the beast! Hold your fire!”

Buffy had already started forward automatically, axe brandished in both hands and ready to chop off the insane bitch’s arms, ally or no. But the crazed demigod had already flung Spike away from her like he was a rag doll to crash into the corner of the cupola, which, oh hell no!

While the nutty Old One returned to her regularly-scheduled dragon-baiting, Buffy changed direction without thought, was at Spike’s side in an instant, helping him to rise. That toss was like something Glory would do. 

“Slayer, we need to stop her. She’s like to kill Peaches.”

For a second, Buffy had forgotten that Angel was up there. Nodding, she turned from her guy. He seemed relatively okay for the moment—thank God he’d fed recently—though he did have to wipe blood from the corner of his mouth as he eyed his co-ruler grimly. And damn, that was worse than it had looked, because he was leaning on Buffy a little as he rose. Fuck, if he had another goddamned broken rib… “Illyria, just stop, or we’re gonna have to put you down. Angel’s up on that dragon!”

Illyria seemed less than rattled by all of this. “You are incorrect. Angel is a demon, if in chains. That which rides upon the dragon is no demon; has no scent of demon in him. Thus he is an intruder. He wears enchantments as if to glamor us that we might not know that he is not what he seems. He comes to attack us, and must be destroyed.”

/Oh God./ It was definitely Angel, then. And apparently Old Ones were not fooled by vamp-alike spells. 

“Then it’s definitely bloody Angel, then, you fool Smurf!” Spike informed her grimly, straightening . “He had his demon cast out when we were all sent here, remember? He’s using those enchantments to pretend to be what he was, so no one will know about his weakness! I told you about it already, yeah?”

“A little louder, Spike. I don’t think they heard you in the next precinct.” Angel’s dry tones could be heard distantly, from the top of the rearing, snorting dragon as he fought to regain control of the injured beast.

Luckily, hearing Angel’s voice seemed to still some of Illyria’s confusion. “You sound like Angel,” she opined, turning her attention back to the figure sitting dark and mysterious a-dragonback. “Granted, this too can be made a trick of the ear…”

Sighing, Buffy dragged herself away from the sagging Spike to close with the uncertain demon-god. “Believe me, I know Angel, demon or no demon. And that’s Angel.” She’d know his voice, the way he moved his shoulders, just the sense of his presence anywhere. Call it a lingering echo of their old bond or who knew what, but she _knew_.

From the dragon’s back, Angel seemed to relax slightly, make a decision. “I’m going to get down now, Illyria, alright? Check on my dragon?”

Illyria ignored this sally to shoot Buffy the sparest of glances. “You have not known this one without his demon. No more than have I.”

Just landing on his feet beside Cordelia and with one hand to inspect her singed scales, Angel froze; so dramatically that it gave Buffy a chill. /What?/ “Is the dragon okay?”

When he turned, he was wearing an expression she knew all too well. It was one she had only seen from her ex when he was about to tell her something he didn’t want her to hear. He avoided her eyes as he locked a brief gaze with Illyria. “Actually, she has.”

/Wait, what? When have I…/

Sensing her sudden swirl of confusion, Spike drew even with her, limping a little, and set his left hand lightly in the small of her back. “When was this, then, Peaches? Because you’d think the Slayer would recall having a run-in with the human you, and she hasn’t mentioned it.” Buffy felt his eyes on her; questioning. Glittering. She shot him a look, calm and certain, that relaxed every ounce of tension in his frame. 

/No/ it said. /It never happened./ 

She turned back to Angel, wondering just what the hell he was blurking about. /I’d remember. If you were _ever_ human with me, before now… I’d _remember!_/

Angel sighed heavily, an odd admixture of regret and a strange, hopeful longing painting the lines of his frame. His eyes flickered over to the horizon, and he absently patted the dragon huffing in pain beside him, so that its whistles of distress slowed a little under his calming touch. He seemed to be very studiously avoiding Buffy’s gaze. “You came to see me, once, Buffy, to find out why I came by but didn’t let you know that I was in town. We fought a demon and then you… thought you left.”

She blinked as memory percolated. “I _thought_ I left? I was there all of five minutes. You killed the whatever it was… The Mothra-whatever, and then we agreed we wouldn’t show up in each other’s cities again without warning, and then I went home.”

For the first time since he’d landed, he met her eyes. They were filled with a look of growing hope so strong it almost made her want to take a step back. /What…/ 

“That was the second time. The first time… we fought the Mohra, but we didn’t know how to kill it. I injured it. Its blood got on me, and it stripped me of my demon. We spent…” His voice shuddered, pain lancing through it in a way that still affected her. “We spent… one beautiful, perfect day together. Eating, talking, making love…”

Her world rocked. “We… Are you saying…” This wasn’t real. “How?” 

It wasn’t a question of how it had happened. He had already told her that. How had she forgotten?   
  
This didn't make any sense. It was insane.

Beside her, somewhere far away, Spike had started up a low, continuous snarl. That too was distant. Everything was distant. Buffy wasn’t even here, really. 

Nothing was real.

“I…” Angel looked pained, his dark eyes wide and anguished. “I needed answers. I left you sleeping, went to see the Oracles of the Powers…”

“Left me… sleeping.” /After taking me to bed, you left me alone. Again. To wake up without you. To think…/

/Again?/

A low, slow rage began to percolate through the bandage of numb distance. 

“…Found out… it was permanent,” Angel was maundering on. “And I realized that I was a liability to you, that way. I couldn’t fight at your side. You proved that when you came after me, found me…”

Buffy held up a hand to forestall him, feeling very abruptly as if she was going to vomit. “I came after you. Found you.”   
  
“Yeah. I went after the Mohra on my own. You had to save me in a fight, and I realized I was only holding you back.”  
  
/You went after it on your own. When you were human. I'm the Slayer and you.../ Buffy closed her eyes, shaking. She could see herself, in a situation like this, though she still had zero memory of the events he recounted. Waking alone, after making love, yet again, with this man who now seemed like a complete and utter stranger to her. Finding him, once more, gone. Struggling with all she had not to land on terror, on devastation. Clinging to the beautiful moments, determined not to think the worst. Hanging on with her fingernails to hope. Going after him, desperate to find him, praying with everything in her that he was still human, alive at all; not evil, not betraying her, not hating her, not…

Burning tears, wrenching her soul. /How could you _do_ that to me again? Do you even _understand_ what it did to me the first time? Or did you only care about finding out what happened to you, and that was it?/

“The Oracles, Buffy,” Angel was saying, somewhere outside of her boundaries. “They said others were coming. Soldiers of Darkness. That eventually they would… kill you, and I… I knew I couldn’t help you, protect you as a human, so I…”

It battered at her like a heavy, bludgeoning weight. A battering ram at her crumbling walls, her long-defended, slowly-repaired gates and oft-fired defenses. /_Protect_ me? When have you… When have I ever needed you to… _protect_ me? When has _anyone_ ever been able to protect me?/ Eyes snapping open once more she stared at him, utterly floored. “They did come,” she pointed out on a breath, feeling numb all the way to her lips. _“You_ weren’t there.”

At her back, Spike growled, low and guttural in his agreement, though he did not touch her. 

To one side, Illyria cocked her head. “Those who dwell in the Other Realms will never cease in their attempts to take mine.” Blank-faced though she was, she sounded oddly discontented as she pronounced it. “It was ever thus, and will be so until I have regained my sovereignty.”

“Now’s not the time, Blue,” Spike muttered, low and impatient. 

A fine tremor ran over Angel, visible in the low red light of hell, and a confused expression crossed his face, as if the interview wasn’t going the way he had expected. “Buffy, you have to understand why! It wasn't even just us. I also knew… that there were people out there I could help—just like you—but only if I was what I used to be. That’s why I…” Regret filled his eyes, a strange plea his voice. “…Asked the Powers That Be to turn back the clock. Swallow the day we had.”

Buffy staggered back against Spike. She couldn’t help it; and she was never more grateful that he was there for her, despite the subject matter, the upheaval the reveal was causing her. He could be upset that she was so affected, but instead he was stable as a brick wall behind her. Tense and thrumming, yes, but she could feel nothing that indicated that carefully-controlled rage was pointed at her. 

It was tough to tell for sure, of course, even with direct contact. The bond felt muted right now. So hard to feel _anything_. When she spoke, though, she could hear her own voice. It sounded cold. “Did I… Did I even get a say in this decision you made to… To take back this apparent perfect day we had?”

Angel’s face tightened into a weird, inward-turned misery; like he couldn’t even see what this was doing to her, hearing this. Like all he could feel was his own remembered pain. “I… There wasn’t time. I went to them to find out whether I still owed the Powers anything. They said my fealty was paid, that I was free…”

/Free? You were free, and you chose to go _back?_ You didn’t choose me?/ She couldn’t. She just couldn’t. “You made a decision that involved me, and you..." /I can't./ "You could’ve asked me what I wanted first, while you were still _thinking_ about it.” It came out in a whisper, edged with venom. So long ago… Back when that had been all she had ever wanted. Before she and Riley had been more than a brief picnic date. Before…

/But you didn’t _want_ it. You didn’t want me./ She had always believed he had. After all, he was _still_ trying to get her. Still trying to pull her away from Spike, but when he’d had the actual _chance_…

She felt Spike shifting behind her, felt everything twist and shudder inside her being. Sensation returning as the blood-bond writhed, reminding her of what she had now. She would never take it back, but… Just… _God! _“You never even bothered to _tell_ me, much less ask.” It wasn’t a question. “You just assumed you knew what was better for me. Just took a day to weigh the pros and cons of being a regular Joe, and decided it was more fun being a superhero?” A new anger filled her up slowly, feeling sick and heavy in her stomach and rising in her throat. “What? As long as you got to do it far away from me, and you could keep paying your toll? Because you, what? Didn’t deserve happiness?” And it hit her, finally; all the times he could have come back to her; to help, at least; after she had died, after her mom had died and she had been struggling every day. With Glory, with her godawful depression; anything. And he had never even made a single attempt. /Another someone did. Imperfectly, constantly, throwing everything he had into it, for better or worse, but you.../  
  
And then, after the hellmouth closed and she had been so broken. /God, I was so stupid, wondering why he didn't try to help. Took it as just more evidence he was being Mr. Evil here with his law firm. That that was the only reason he wouldn't care./ She had so badly needed a friend who knew her, loved her unconditionally. But he hadn’t tried, had ignored her pain, her loneliness... and she knew now why. It had been to keep her for himself, keep Spike from her, even if it might have destroyed them both. /Okay, but why always come back and ask me if I'm still your girl, when you never actually wanted me?/ Just, god, why? Was it only to reinforce his damn bond?  
  
None of it made any sense, because if he'd gone back to being a vamp to help... How much had he ever really _helped _with those powers he had decided to keep at the cost of staying away? /Except for that time when you brought the amulet, which…/ 

/No./ “Or was it because being with me didn’t really make you as happy as being miserable does?" It wasn't quite a question, though. For the first time, Buffy was starting to realize… maybe that was it. /If you’re with me, you can’t pay. And you have to pay. Which means never being happy. And you didn’t care if that meant I was stuck in limbo. You didn’t want me to move on. You wanted me in pain with you. Why did I deserve that? I didn’t commit your crimes, dammit, Angel!/ 

Her words seemed to strike him hard, like a blow. He reeled back a little, against his dragon. Which, good. She was so pissed off right now that she couldn’t even breathe. “It wasn’t worth consulting me, apparently, to find out what I wanted out of this stupid perfect day of yours. You already knew it was better to stick it out as a lonely soldier with a tragic backstory, as long as it meant you didn’t have to come back and just _support_ me while _I_ did it.” She bit off the words like they were broken things. Like they would crack in her teeth and poison her tongue if she didn’t spit them out.

His voice was breathless, agonized as he answered her. “No! Buffy, that wasn’t it! I knew you had to have someone with you who could pull their own weight, and I _couldn’t_ when I was human! I couldn’t be what you needed…”

“Again,” she snapped, livid now, “you decided that _for_ me! You didn’t even ask, because you have no _idea_ what I actually want; and then you _never_ came back! Not really, no matter what you say! It’s all lip service, Angel! You were just another man who walked out of my life, and when you had the chance to come back you said, ‘No thanks, I’d rather do other things’…”

“I was trying to do the right _thing!_ They said the war was coming, and I…”

“The war is _always_ coming!” she snapped, and felt Spike’s assent behind her, in every line of his being. “It _always_ will. And it will always be _my_ problem. Mine, and now my girls. But you got a _choice_, damn you… and you chose _not_ to stand with me!”

“No!” he practically shouted at her. “I chose this _for_ you! So that you’d never have to fight, maybe die, alone!"

Everything inside her went cold. “But I did anyway, didn’t I, Angel?”

He flinched back like she had punched him. Which she really should, except what would be the point? It would kill him, the way she was feeling now, and him human. And she could do it in words. She was beyond furious. She felt like death incarnate right now. /You can’t break me anymore./ “Except, really, I didn’t.” And her hand found Spike’s, behind her. The one who _had_ stayed; past agony, beyond exhaustion, to the death, and still came back for her. “I wasn’t alone. I had humans who dared to stand up anyway, without a single power to justify their being there. I had people willing to throw in with me because it was the right thing to do; because they loved me and knew I needed them… and I had someone who taught me, finally that he would never, ever desert me.” /You left. Spike stayed. No matter what I threw at him, because of you… Spike stayed. Oh, God, Spike…/ 

She let her hand slip away from the man who stood solid behind her. The one who would never leave. If she let the emotions flood her right now, that complex mix of desperate gratitude and unworthiness, self-worth returned, need fulfilled and secure love, she wouldn’t be hard enough. And she needed Angel to see only what he had earned from her right now, and not what Spike had garnered. Nothing else, shining from her eyes. /Angel first, for the last time, to let him _know_./ “What I never had, Angel… was _you_.”

Everything in his dark, classically handsome face crumbled. It was the look of a man who had made a last, desperate gambit and had found out that it had quite unexpectedly blown up in his face. “I didn’t… mean to fail you, Buffy. I always meant to come back. I held that day in my heart for us both till the time when we could be together. I just…”

“Left.” It came out still. Quiet. Flat. /Did you actually think that I’d hear about this and leave Spike to go flying into your arms? So, what; you could tell me no again? That you weren’t ready, that we can’t, that there’s still work to do?/ God.

She finally understood. “You made your choice, and it wasn’t me.” She lifted her eyes then to rivet him with a glare. “Do you have any idea how that makes me _feel?”_ Angel shuddered a little and looked away. “And then, what? You _lied_ to me about it all these years?” The realization, belated but as freshly horrifying now as it would have been then, tracked new agony through her soul. The very violation of it; that he had stood there, in front of her, over and over again, and _pretended_... 

She couldn’t cry. She was so far past tears when it came to this man, it was beyond the reckoning of it. /I’ve wasted so many damn tears on you./ She would never have believed it; that she could feel these things when looking at a face she had once loved so desperately, but she did now. Betrayal. Violation. Disgust. “So, did come tell give me a goodbye kiss before it all went back,” she asked almost conversationally, “or did you just stay away until they turned back the clock to the moment you could kill the thing without getting any blood on your hands?” It was a fair question, to the man who had not even had the guts to say goodbye to her before he left her in the ashes and smoke of a battle.

Her ex stared at her, a broken expression on his face. “I came back,” he whispered. “We had… a couple of minutes. They were the worst minutes of my life. You… begged me to stay…”

She couldn’t. She just couldn’t. That almost made it worse, because it kind of made her wonder what was the point of that, too. /If I couldn’t remember, why would I need to be told, huh? Now that I think about it, I would’ve completely fallen apart, and… Did you like seeing me wrecked like that? Like the last time you left? Is that how you know I love you? When I get all hysterical, feeling you leave me, because you had a hold on me and you kept tearing yourself away over and over again, ripping me in half?/ 

Why? Just, why all of it? “So you decided that for me too, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question. “You always decided, _for_ me. You know what? I can’t.” Turning away, she faced Spike’s direction, unable to speak, she was so overwhelmed with betrayal, with old, sick rage unspent. “Spike, I can’t. I’ll do something I’ll regret…” /If I hit him, I'll kill him./ He was human. And they probably still needed Angel for… something here. She couldn’t remember what right now, had no brain at the moment for hellish politics. All she knew was if she got physical there would be repercussions, and she was no longer eighteen, nineteen. Hugged her right fist in her left hand, shaking with the need to punch something, kill someone. 

If someone needed to take on Illyria, she was down. She could murder right now. /How could he…/ 

How many times had he taken her power away from her like that? Did she even know? /I thought we were so beautiful./

Spike’s hand on her shoulder, cool and reassuring, everything about him something her body was trained to react to with calm. She breathed, automatic and deep. Inhale, exhale. “I’m here, luv. Go on.” Inhale, exhale. Nod, though no words. Couldn’t trust words, not yet. As always, though, his steady presence, though reflective of her justified wrath, was a boon in these times; a bulwark of wry irritation and dark amusement as he turned away to face his grandsire. “Well, now we know for sure who we’re dealing with, innit?”

“Oh, go to hell, Spike.”

“Think we’re already there, Peaches. Probably best we keep the visit political rather than social. Why’d you come? Or was it just to destroy the girl for old times’ sake?”

Angel sighed heavily, and there came a rustling noise she knew well as the sound of him scrubbing a hand over his face… and she should leave. She didn’t want to be here for this anymore. None of it. “I thought we should compare notes about current events. See if we can come up with a plan…”

His light voice, once a source of fond remembrance in Buffy’s mind, of relaxation and wonderful associations, now rang with deceit, and with pain, and god; no wonder Riley had been so on edge around Angel when he had come into town after the whole body-swap thing. She might not have remembered, but _Angel_…

Riley’s instincts had been right on the money after all, in a way. She and Angel had been all ready to get right back together just a couple of months before, and then it had all fallen apart, and he’d been carrying that for both of them. No wonder that Riley had felt all that from her ex when she’d been moving on, getting all tangled up in her uncertainty with Mr. Finn and his inability to tell the difference between her and Faith; and okay, maybe Riley _should_ have been unsettled about their relationship about then. It had never really recovered, between that and her having had a taste of Spike to haunt her before they had even started, to let her know what she was missing… And, now, apparently on some spiritual level, maybe there was also this? And then there was Angel, coming around feeling all like he had had some kind of one-sided, claim-y taste of perfection with her, something he had ‘nobly given up for her own good’…

/Oh my God./ She thought she might actually throw up, thinking of it now. Him hovering around, visiting, looking at her and thinking of them doing things together that she couldn’t even _remember_… /Because he took the memories _away_ from me./

They needed all the allies they could get in hell. /We need…/ 

The straight-punch to the defunct rooftop air-conditioner didn’t just dent the metal. It tore the massive unit from its bolts. The huge, heavy casing ripped away from the dusty surface with a rending screech to keel over sideways, a misshapen hulk, to reveal a dented and broken fan-and-gear structure beneath. The vast ductwork echoed down into the building with the reverberations of her blow.

To one side of her, Illyria nodded as if approving of her show of strength. “I would like to engage in combat with you, demon-slayer. It would be… entertaining.”

/Oh goody./ “Sounds like fun,” Buffy murmured distantly, massaging her bruised knuckles.

“Oh Christ,” Spike groaned, and spun back to Angel. “Look at the trouble you’ve caused, Peaches. Fuck. Go ahead and update us on what you know. We’ll pass on what we’ve heard, and we’ll all be all caught up. Then you can go back to wherever the hell you came from, yeah?”  
  
“Back off, Spike. This isn’t your problem…”

“My problem if I say it is, Peaches. Shut your trap unless you’re talking politics, or you can get right back up on your fancy, smoking dragon there and piss the hell off. Only reason one or both of us hasn’t killed you right now is it’s Buffy’s call, and she seems to think we still need you around for something political. She always was a practical bird.”

A long silence, and my god, she loved him. She loved Spike. So _fucking_ much. Why had she never realized how much sooner, never told him before this last year? 

How dumb had she _been?_

“I _should_ just leave. But we need all the coordination we can get. And you should know about this new vampire demon lord down in South LA who...”

Spike’s dry delivery was calculated to take all the wind out of Angel’s sails. “Yeah, we hear Charlie-boy’s become quite the little vampire king, innit?”

A stunned silence. “The vamp-DL is _Gunn?”_

“Oh. Didn’t know that, is it?”

“Oh, God…” Angel sounded like the news of his old friend and employee’s siring had broken him.

“Yeah. He’s a right bastard of a fledge,” Spike answered darkly.

There was a short, pained silence from Angel. When he spoke again, it was in a slightly recovered tone. “Explains a few things. Did you hear he’s got captive Slayers?”

It was a comment calculated to bring Buffy back into the conversation, and dammit, it worked. She whirled around, fists clenching. “He _what?”_ she demanded, horrified right out of her personal rage.

Angel’s eyes on hers were grim. “Found out about it from a human I rescued mid-chase. One of his boys was playing ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ with a few party favors outside his nest. Got ‘em out, got some intel.” He shook his head grimly. “I don’t know how he’s doing it, but apparently he’s trapped three of them; is using them to train his people. Their description of how they fought made it tough to deny it.” 

His dark, haunted eyes jerked away to meet Spike’s. “He’s made his first big move, too, which is the main reason I came. He’s killed Kr’ph, the demon lord of Westwood, but he’s pinned it on you, Spike. The only reason I know it was him is because I know Buffy’s signature moves, and the Slayer moves he had his boys using down there were nothing she’d teach.” His eyes slid to Buffy’s briefly once more, then jumped away.

She felt her fists ratchet even tighter. She’d liked Charles Gunn, but now he was very swiftly becoming a serious problem.

Angel’s attention was back on Spike. “Rumor has it he also picked up a hostage while he was there. Someone you knew from Mosaic? A telepath named Betta George…”

“Bloody hell.”

Buffy jerked around to regard Spike with concern. She didn’t know what ‘Mosaic’ was, but he sounded far more worried about Gunn having this George guy in his custody than he did about being accused of randomly going after other demon lords’ territories, which seemed kind of off to her. 

“And I don’t know if you’ve heard about Lorne…”

“Yeah, he’s set up over in Silver Lake, making a name for himself as a nice rest stop for the pulsers and any other gentle sorts want to stay out of the troubles. Nice of him to do it; keeps the spotlight off of us, like, though I don’t know how long he’s liable to keep it up. He’s not gonna be able to sing away trouble for long.”

“Well, he’s managed to get himself a witch of some sort, and a champion who’ll fight for him. You don’t know the guy, but Groosalugg could outfight either of us. He’s a half-demon, kind of a relative of Lorne’s from Pylea; Cordelia’s ex. He threw in with Lorne in the name of old associations after we all fell into hell; has a winged horse named after her…”

Buffy couldn’t believe it. God, was there anybody in this stupid dimension who wasn’t naming their horses or whatever after Cordelia? She was the freaking prom queen even in _hell_; and even after she was _dead!_

“Anyway, I think he’s set for a while. He’s doing his damnedest to make his territory some kind of Heaven in Hell.” 

“Yeah, that sounds like Greenie.” Spike rocked back on his heels a little, tones somewhere between impatient and neutral. “He gonna help with the fight, or is he still hangin’ back?”

Angel sounded weary when he answered. “I think he’s a reluctant leader as it is. His people have basically elected him ruler. He’ll take it on because he’s a good guy, but he’s going to try to stay impartial. You know him; he hates to rock the boat. But I think… if the chips are down, he’ll side with us. And Groo said he’d back me whenever I needed a hand, in Cordy’s honor.” 

/Of course. In _Cordy’s_ honor. Holy wow./

Angel’s face set a little, an odd expression touching his eyes. “The only issue is what to do about all this as it really starts to ramp up. And it seems to be doing it already. I had to come here to see where you really stood. I figured…” His eyes flickered once, briefly, back toward Buffy, then skittered away as he straightened. “But if nothing’s changed here, then I know my answer.”

“Oh.” Spike nodded once, sharply, and he crossed his arms. “I see, then.” 

“What?” Buffy demanded, of Spike directly so that she could exclude her ex as much as possible from the conversation. She would rather just pretend Angel wasn’t there right now, but it was also clear that she had missed something without realizing it. 

Feeling along the unseen tether between herself and Spike, Buffy sought for clues in the dark as her guy jerked his chin at Angel, tones wry. “He wanted to come here to suss out whether I’d turned to the dark side, luv. Actually done what he knows now for sure Gunn did, yeah?” His eyes narrowed to blue slits. “Apparently I’m a right question-mark unless I have you about to keep me in check. Nothin’ to be said for damn near a year workin’ together, I guess.”

/Oh for God’s sake, Angel…/ Couldn’t he just accept he’d played his hand wrong and lost, and let it go? 

Turning back a little, arms crossed in mirror of Spike’s pose, she eyed her ex briefly. Saw that Angel had the grace, at least, to look embarrassed, though his eyes also managed to look vaguely accusatory. “I had to know. I mean, I’ve heard you’ve met with some of the other, less powerful demon lords; you and Illyria. Like you were making power-moves. Then this. For all I know you were going after territory. You might’ve had your reasons; good ones, even, if it meant helping people, or…”

“Or I might be goin’ back to bein’ a right petty criminal again, that it? Gray-hat to cover up the rescue mission, at least? Or that I’m only doin’ the rescues to cover up my more dastardly crimes?” Spike didn’t even sound aggrieved; just tired. “That it, Peaches? Can’t believe I’d keep my white hat, fight the good fight, without you or Buffy around to keep me on the straight and narrow?”

Buffy couldn’t blame Spike for being exhausted. Was Angel actually _defending_ his idiocy? Dropping her fists at her sides, she turned her back once more in an effort to leave them to it, because if she said anything right now it would probably be something she would regret later. Or she would say it with her fists. That was her usual M.O. when she was this pissed. It helped to repeat a little chant in her mind. It went something like, ‘I will not hit Angel, I will not hit Angel…’ 

It was a near thing, though, because human or no, how much would it really hurt him to just give him one really light uppercut? 

Just a little one? 

/No. Let Spike defend himself. He’s a big boy…/

Angel’s voice hardened, turned all instigator-y. “I also heard rumors from the sanctuary that you might be… biting people.”

“Oh, bleedin’ Christ. Junior needs to learn to keep his sodding mouth shut.” 

/No, that’s it. I’ve changed my mind about keeping quiet./ Whirling again, Buffy stalked right up to her ex, got into his face, or as close as she could get to it since he towered over her. “He’s fed from a few volunteers. _I_ found them for him, because I’d rather he didn’t starve.”

Angel reeled back as if she actually _had_ punched him in the face. “You’re okay with letting him catch-and-release? You’re actually _helping_ him?”

“I kind of want him _alive!” _She invested that word with all the scorn she could heap on it, and glared at Angel as if he was the world’s biggest fool. /How do you even get to talk, since this isn’t even something you have to worry about anymore?/ Stared him down while he gaped. “Do you _see_ any blood banks around here?” 

Angel’s mouth opened and shut for a minute, like some kind of very large, human guppy, and then he closed it suddenly and sharply, as if he were doing an impression of the Nutcracker. 

They stood around for along minute in an uncomfortable silence.

Illyria was watching them all throughout this conversation, a strange tilt to her head. She spoke up out of nowhere now, eyes watching Angel with that bizarre intensity of hers. “You speak like Angel. You sound like Angel. But you are not Angel. I must ponder this.” Moving away, she paced the roof somewhat off to the side, sounding troubled.

Angel watched her for a second, looking slightly alarmed. “Problems?” he asked finally.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Spike answered stoically, which was the understatement of the year, and jerked his chin at his grandsire, turning the older vampire’s accusation back on him. “You talk like I could just as easily be up to no good, yeah? But how the hell do you know all this, anyway, Peaches? What kind of grapevine you have going out there, anyway?”

Angel shrugged a little. “I have Cordelia here,” he answered with a fond pat to his injured dragon. “And Connor comes by once in a while.” He frowned slightly, avoiding Buffy’s eyes. “Look, I know you’re not my biggest fan right now…”

A derisive snort for the understatement. 

“But we are family, or at least allies, so I was hoping you can give me something to patch her up. I mean, if you want out of your hair so bad…”

“Can heal her at the bloody lawyer’s den, then.”

“I’m not sure if she can get back to Wolfram and Hart like this, dammit, Spike! She’s my main transportation, and she’s suffering! And besides, I fly around on her trying to help as much as I can. I do rescues here and there, send the people I find on to Conner and Nina…”

“Little shit’s never mentioned it.”

“I’ve asked him not to make a lot of noise about it.”

“Oh, yeah?” Spike asked, an odd, instigating note in his voice. “Nice to be able to stop in and pick up the gossip, see the girl while you’re in the neighborhood, is it?”

Buffy had been almost warming up to Angel a little during this recital of his deeds, but now she froze slightly, hearing the note in Spike’s voice. /‘The girl’?/ 

She could feel Angel’s eyes on her back as he replied; heard the discomfort in his voice. And realized, belatedly, that her lover had been working to let her know something more about her ex.

“Spike, it isn’t like that. She has her life, I have mine. We went on all of a couple of dates…”

“That’s not what I heard. Heard you actually managed to get yourself shagged without the universe turning upside-down, yeah? Why’d you let that go is beyond me.”

/Oh./ Angel had dated Nina Ash. Not only dated her—and apparently recently—but had gotten serious enough to risk sex with her. And he had had a deeply serious relationship with Cordelia; one so intense that he spent all his time talking to her in his fever dreams, like she was his conscience or something. Which should all hurt, and might have once, if Buffy wasn’t so insanely numb at this point. 

What _did_ hurt, still, was the way he always seemed to look at Buffy like she was… Was some kind of insane person intent on ripping his heart out for moving on with Spike, no matter how who Angel had moved on to, or who he had been with, which was just… What even _was_ that?

She could feel Angel’s eyes slide over, trying desperately to catch hers. She kept hers oriented away, beyond furious at his double standard and aware that if she met his gaze right now she would do something he would totally misinterpret. They both would. Angel would think she was jealous and that it would mean he still had a chance. Even worse, Spike would believe it, which would be disastrous, when the problem really was she was horrifically betrayed. 

Holy crap. She would have never thought she would feel _this_ toward Angel. This much anger, this much rage, this much… _God_. Just, crushing _disappointment_.

“I think it was more that I was… neutral about her. It was pleasant.” The jerk was still trying to talk to her, through Spike, she thought. Trying to reach her with his voice. “Not perfect despair, like with Darla. Not perfect…” His voice caught, stopped, as if he had seen the tightness in Buffy’s shoulders, the way her hands clenched into nail-biting fists at her sides in utter denial of his attempts to conciliate, to bring her back to the fold. She _would_ not, _could_ not hear him talk about the supposed perfection of their ‘one day’. Not when it was something he had taken from her. Something only he could remember, and which he had chosen for her to forget. “It was just… pleasant. That was what made it possible.” He let out a sorrowing sort of breath, loaded with regret. “But that was why it wasn’t something worth continuing, either.”

Spike was there; facing Angel, but with his eyes on hers. Checking in. Checking to see if she was okay. She clung to the sight of him like a lifeline, fighting to control her breathing while he spoke, over her shoulder with his eyes never leaving her face. “Yeah, well, I don’t know about you, mate, but if I was you I’d take what I could get instead of just prancing off like a poof every time a nice girl looked twice at me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not you, _Spike.” _ His cutting tones were back again, with a vengeance. “I’ve _had_ perfect, and I can’t face accepting anything else.” Buffy could feel those familiar dark eyes touching on her recently-renewed claim-mark, opposite Angel’s old one on her neck. Those words too, and most importantly the sorrow in them, had been meant to reach her, not her lover. Meant to make her regret something that might have been, between them. 

And it might have, once. If he hadn’t been the one to take it away, for the both of them. But he _had_. He had been the one to throw that away. He had tossed it out like garbage, and removed all traces of the experience from the very record of her existence. /That’s on you, you jerk; not me./

And all of a sudden his piteous tones made wrath rise in her rather than empathy. /_No_. Don’t feel bad for him. He makes it sound like that’s why he can’t move on, but he _did! _He had a kid with Cordelia—or sort of, anyway—and he dated werewolf girl, and apparently that went just _fine_… and yet he’s still all weird about _me_ being with _Spike? _Weird enough about it that he happily betrayed me to keep Spike’s existence a secret from me for like a _year?_

/_God…_/He was even weirder about Spike than he had ever been about her being with Riley. He had practically given Riley his seal of approval, which, why? Because he wasn’t a threat? Because he felt like Riley was ‘the right kind of guy for her’? What _was_ that, even? /But when it’s his own ‘grandson’…/

It hit her all at once, in a rush. /When it’s another vampire. When I choose, of my own free will, to walk back into ‘demons and darkness’…/

The instant she’d walked away from ‘the light’, and ‘children’, and all that other garbage he’d decided she’d needed, should have whether it made sense in her life or not... The instant she had stepped out of the future he had decided she should have, if she couldn’t have him… 

/It meant that he lost out. That he wasn’t good enough. That in the end, he wasn’t the one I wanted./ But what a catch22, since he was never going to let her have him, anyway. /You wouldn’t let me have you, but you still thought you got to dictate to me who I got to be with instead. How is that _love?_/ 

Knowing the truth was a heady drug. She could never have had him. Because to have had him, he would have had to change. /And you never really wanted to change for me. Not really. Instead you wanted _me_ to change… back to who I was a long time ago. But to have Spike…/

/Spike changed for me of his own free will, a million times, when I never asked him to. Heck, when I fought to try to keep him the same, he still changed. And _he_ never asked me to change at all. He just let me be me; whoever I was at the time, and loved me. All he wanted was for me to accept his love. That was it./ 

“Just stop, Angel,” she heard herself say, and made to face him down once and for all. “You made your decision. It’s over. Long over.” Reaching back, she folded her fingers into Spike’s long, cool grasp. Felt his hand fold around hers; tight, grateful. Felt him lift his head over hers to face Angel, armed by the surety of her recommitment. 

“Don’t know what you were thinking, Peaches.” Blue eyes glowed on hers. “You gave _up_ on perfect so you could be a prancing hero. Right fool, and I don’t envy you...”

“Yeah, well maybe I did,” Angel shot back, clearly stung, “but you only _became_ one so you could _have_ perfect! Don’t think we don’t all know that your only motivation for trying to be good is for her! Not for the good of the world or any other reason but…”

Spike’s voice came back to her; thick with agony. Broken. _‘Buffy, shame on you. Why does a man do what he mustn't? For _her_. To be _hers_. To be the kind of man who would nev… To be a kind of man… And she shall look on him with forgiveness, and everybody will forgive and love. He will be loved.’_

/Oh God, Angel, why is that not enough? It’s all _love!_/

“I can’t think of a better reason,” a much healthier Spike said, now, to a man who might never understand, “a nobler reason to do it than in the name of love. And yeah. I found out it’s worth it, either way. Kind of like you, since you can’t tell me it wasn’t pretty much the same for you.”

“I don’t know where you got your information, _Spike_, but…”

“As if you didn’t crawl out of the sewers—eating rats, most like—see the girl, and decide you wanted to get close to her before you _ever_ thought of becoming the great, swotty hero you are now, you unbelievable…”

It sounded like an argument they had had already. Buffy hated it. She hated everything about it. “He was already perfect,” she interrupted flatly. 

_“What?”_ Angel demanded, still at full, Spike-fighting volume.

She was so beyond done with their petty squabbling; over her, over who was the better man, all of it. Especially when Spike needed to know… he’d long since won. She lifted her eyes to his. Found them, staring down in stunned blue amazement. “You were already perfect,” she repeated, but she was saying it this time to the man in front of her. /My perfectly imperfect guy, for this imperfect girl you keep telling me is the perfect one for you. Just... the One./ “Even if I couldn’t see it yet. And you were already mine.”

God. The look in his eyes was… everything.

Before Angel could jump in with something pitiful or caustic, Illyria interrupted, stepping in between them to lay a light hand on the keening dragon’s shoulder. They all jumped a little, so intent had they all been on their conversation that none of them had seen her change direction; and not a little because the dragon herself reared back spectacularly at the demigod’s approach, clearly convinced she was about to destroy it.

And then, abruptly, its labored, whistling breathing cut off into a low, satisfied rumble. “The creature is healed,” Illyria pronounced blandly, and turned to face Angel as if nothing of any moment had occurred. Lifted the hand again. Touched his face. And then shrieked as if she had been slapped with a bolt of lightning. 

And fell to the ground, writhing. “A…Angel?” she asked in a small voice.

All the blue had gone out of her. And her voice had a Texas twang in it.

***

“So. I take it Illyria’s been having problems?”

“She’s been a bit erratic, yeah. Always does come back to herself after a few hours. Just needs some time away from the stress.”

The boys were laying ‘Fred Sonja’ on her bed, while Buffy kept watch on the hall to make sure none of the Pink Palace’s resident demon-girl retinue caught wind of her current incapacity. And, you know, to stay as far out of the suite as possible, in the free air. Because, dangit, it smelled like death in there. 

With a faint frown, she pulled the door mostly closed and eyed the room through the crack with no small interest, though she had to hold her breath as she did so. Having avoided this wing till now, it wasn’t at all what she had pictured. More like a monk’s cell than what she would have expected from a demigod. Though the room itself had originally been pretty posh, to use Spike’s word (she thought she’d heard it called ‘the Premier Suite’), somehow Illyria had managed to strip it down to fundamentals. The pink walls remained, the deep-pile pink-and-gray carpet… but there was only one slate-gray chair remaining, and all the other tables and chairs that had probably once graced the room had been moved to one side or carted out. 

A large, curved divan remained, though, to be dragged across the room. On it lay the… well, remains. She tried not to look at them. Thank goodness they were situated in front of the open sliding glass doors that led to this room’s balcony, so at least the place was airing out on a regular basis. All along the top of the fancy sofa, lining the couch of honored death in a long row, were about seven plants of varying kinds, all in some state or another of struggling demise. Browning philodendrons, moribund ferns, a tiny, withered elephant ear, a papery bird of paradise, crisp as parchment. A monument to an attempt at coaxing life, and thank god, they gave Buffy somewhere else to rest her eyes besides the (unfortunately, still somewhat recognizable) mummy.

Anyway, they weren’t kidding about the plant hobby thing. Did Old Ones realize that plants needed water to live? Also, they should probably cue Illyria in at some point that what was dead was dead. And, you know, that when humans did it, they didn’t smell as harmless as plants did. And took longer to dry out. Though… maybe she wasn’t as offended by smells like that as were the ‘lesser’ species?

Buffy wasn’t sure how Angel, and especially Spike, were handling it in there. They might be used to raunchy odors after a lifetime of smelling grody, semi-bathed people and general demonic nastiness, but the corpses they were used to tended to be fresh, for one thing. And then there was the whole vampiric sense of smell thing, and how was Spike _doing_ this? At least for Angel that part was a lesser issue at the moment.

The rest of the former furnishings had been spared being filled with corpse-odors, having been removed to wherever, but the bed was still there at least. She could see a corner of it from the door; no doubt formerly draped with a myriad pillows and things, based off of what she had experienced in the Presidential Suite. It was a bare, flat surface now, which contained exactly one item. Illyria. 

“So, what’s the problem?” Angel was saying, as if he couldn’t tell what at least half of it was right now, with the whole ‘obsessed with a dead body’ thing.

“Seems she’s having trouble hanging on to her demon side.”

“She doesn’t _have_ sides, Spike! Fred’s _gone!_ This has to be some kind of game, or…”

Buffy could tell even from here how much this hurt her guy, and maybe Angel too. Their voices were strained. Both of their jaws were tight, ticking as they looked down on the petite, brown-haired girl on the bed. “Dunno, Peaches. All I can figure is she doesn’t seem in control of it. Maybe the dimension’s throwing her off. Started noticing it on our trek over, when we picked up a few refugees. Knocked her for a loop when one of ‘em looked a bit like Oxford.” 

From across the room, Buffy heard Angel grunt as if someone had hit him in the stomach. “That why she’s still…” An uneasy glance back toward the occupant—if that was what you could call it—of the couch in the living room. 

“I dunno. She’s havin’ a hard time lettin’ go. And I have had to keep Buffy away, since being around any human sends her into a tizzy if they’re too close for too long…”

/Human being a relative term…/

“…Which makes court tough, since every time we bring a load of refugees in, she acts like they’re lice. But I s’pose it’s better than this. Long as I can keep her in top form in any confrontation with one of the top flight demons, I’ll be dead chuffed about it.” She could hear the wry twist he brought to the next, though she couldn’t see his face from here. “More so if I could get rid of the baggage in there. Smell’s starting to drift, mate. But she always goes after it and carts it back in. All we can do to get her to keep the windows open.”

Angel sounded pained. “You might have to start keeping her out of sight unless you need her for a little theater, if she’s degrading. Which is a problem, because it’s becoming de rigueur for the more established demon lords to have champions to represent them when they fight each other. And the way things are going now that Gunn’s put you in the middle of that war…”

Spike grunted audibly. “She couldn’t’ve done it anyway, then. We’re both the demon lords here. Wouldn’t’ve looked right to have her fight, even if she’s the stronger of the two of us.” He sounded uncomfortable even considering it. “Not that I could trust her to keep her head on straight right now even so. She might switch back to Fred mid-battle.” His tones carried a slight note of anxiety under the brash, confident surface. “Same reason I can’t do it, yeah? Unless I abdicate in her favor, but I can’t rightly do that without the same problem of havin’ her do it while she runs things.”

A sense of absolute certainty flooded through Buffy. A feeling of rightness, of realization so strong it was like being hit with a waking vision. It was almost like that moment with the dragon, or the one that had flooded through her the night before they'd gone into battle behind Angel’s hotel; before they’d ended up here, when she’d faced down the last of Spike’s fears, and, she could swear now, something had grabbed hold of her words and spoken through her to keep him at her side. /He’s a leader here. And I’m… I’m not the Slayer. But I can still…/

Drawing a deep breath of clean air, she let it tide her over as she stepped through the doorway to catch their eyes. “Um, hello?” And she lifted her hand. Wiggled it a little.

They both swiveled around in tandem to face her, blinking. They looked, in that moment, bizarrely alike, which was something she would never have thought she would say before this moment. Not in her life. But their expressions, as it slowly dawned on them what she was saying, filled with horror and shock in complete tandem, so that it almost made her dispel her little remaining store of air in a sardonic laugh. Because, seriously? Why the hell else had she been _brought_ here to this stupid dimension, anyway? 

Spike was doing great as a leader. As a demon lord, as a provider of sanctuary, as a co-conspirator, as a warrior. He might even have eventually figured out how to keep himself fed, without her around to make him feel self-conscious about it. She couldn’t have come here just to be his on-again-off-again blood supply and donor-getter, or to shore up his mood when he was having a few bouts with self-doubt. 

This? This champion thing was a mission worthy of her skills. 

Dammit, she was gonna have to talk more. “What? You said this Groosalugg was a part-demon who was stronger than either of you. Sounds about right.” And she was out of air. Ugh. Shallow breaths as she twitched her raised hand again, waving it in their faces. “Slayer, just hanging around here waiting for big nasty demons to kill?” /Do not ruin it by gagging at the stench…/

Angel groaned and covered his face with one hand. “Spike, talk to her, will you?” he asked, sounding pained.

But Spike was just watching at her with that _look_ in his eye. The one that said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this, Love?’

“Yeah,” she answered the look aloud; low but firm and sure.

“Alright, then,” he responded, as quietly.

Startled by this one-sided conversation, Angel peeped out from between cracked fingers, then dropped his hand to stare at them in shock. “Wait, what? No! You can’t just…”

Spike snorted and, shaking his head, turned back to his interrupted task of straightening Illyria’s limbs. Finished grimly and turned back, still wry as hell. “You berk, you don’t think she can handle herself?”

“That’s not the point! You haven’t seen Burge and his champions—he’s got at _least_ three, and they’re _massive!_—and who knows how many the others…”

Spike gaze never broke contact with Buffy’s. “Peaches, how many times have I got to tell you; you _don’t_ tell Buffy what to do and keep your balls intact.”

/And he wonders why I’m with the vampire I’m with./

Angel was staring at Spike like he’d lost his mind. “God, you’re whipped.” He said it like it was just now dawning on him. Like he was horrified at the very thought of living in such a state.

Spike didn’t seem to be perturbed in the slightest as he left Illyria’s bedside to head toward the door. “Well, yeah,” he agreed blandly, and ignoring his grandsire thereafter, kept his focus on Buffy. Reaching her, simply looked into her eyes. “You don’t have to, you know.”

She, too, ignored Angel’s determined approach as he marched in Spike’s wake, to meet depthless sapphire eyes, drawing her in like kismet. “I know.”

He nodded, accepting it as given. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” 

He took her hand. Just held it for a moment, while the wealth of feeling he was experiencing washed between them, through the blood-bond. Times like this she could even almost forget that she was standing in a room with a corpse.

Almost. 

“Buffy, you _can’t_ do this. I know what you’ve faced at the hellmouth, but we’re talking about multiple demon lords here, with _all_ their champions! They could all attack at once if they get mad or feel threatened enough; storm the place… You’re used to having a whole team at your back! Here you’d just have…”

She swung on Angel, abruptly incensed. “Spike. Illyria, if she’s doing alright; _and_ a small army of demon-girls who have given them their entire allegiance. And it’s nice to know you think I can’t do my job without a team…”

Angel halted, went stiff. “It’s not that,” he answered formally. “It’s a matter of battle strategy. How we’re used to fighting. I prefer to have a team too, obviously; and I learned that from you. That was all I was saying; that you can’t face all this alone…”

“I can,” she told him coldly, suddenly very done with him. “In a way, I’ve always been alone. But I won’t have to. And I appreciate your concern, Angel, but I think we’ve built plenty of solid groundwork here to manage alright moving forward.”

He winced, clearly coming aware only then that he had seriously stepped on her toes. “I didn’t mean that I don’t have faith in you, Buffy. It’s just… overconfidence has killed you once already…”

Stunned rage flooded her, damn near turned off her brain. /Are you _serious?_ Did you seriously just _say_ that? You weren’t even _in_ that fight! Overconfidence my ass; I only did what I _had_ to do!/ She was actually going to deck him. Human or no, she was going to lay him out like she hadn’t since Faith… “Angel,” she managed in a voice shaking with fury and the remains of what she knew was trauma, “I’d think very, very carefully before I said anything else about Glory, since you were totally elsewhere in that war.”

Through the haze in her eyes, she thought she saw her ex rear back, away from the look on her face.

“Bloody amen.” She could feel Spike’s blood boiling from here, heard his voice echoing in her mind. _‘I want you to know I _did_ save you. Not when it counted, of course; but after that. Every night after that. I’d see it all again. I do something different. Faster or more clever, you know? Dozens of times, lots of different ways._

_‘Every night I save you.’_ She knew how it haunted him, her death. And he’d been there to see it. Had been there to try. 

Angel was standing very still, just outside her reach. He looked stymied. “I… just don’t want you to get hurt because you’re helping…”

“Spike?” She spat it out flatly, not giving him a chance to finish. This conversation was _so_ not happening. “What if I was still over at Wolfram and Hart, helping _you?_ Would you mind then, if I picked up an axe and started swinging in front of your helpless human butt? Or would that not be okay now, because you’re a ‘liability’ to me without your heroic demon side?”

He looked like she actually _had_ slapped him across the face; which would be fitting. A slap instead of a punch, like he didn’t deserve… It all came pouring out. “Or is this different, here, because you can’t choose to take it back, so you’ll accept all the help you can get? Are you just trying to win me back to your side, and Spike can go hang?”

He looked a little helpless then.

She felt her love’s firm presence at her back. Knew it was time. “Thank you for bringing us the news, and for helping with Illyria. But I think you’d better go, Angel; _before_ I hurt you. Because I don’t know how long I can not. And this time I won’t apologize if I swing. And human or not, I won’t be sorry.”

His face tightened. Without another word he turned and, moving around Spike, passed them to head out of the suite and back toward the stairs. 

And for the first time in her life, Buffy was glad to see a man she had loved walk away.

She waited until he was gone before she sagged against the bulwark of the one who had _never_ left. Never would. And, more importantly… had never and would never betray her. Felt his hands, supportive and calm on her shoulders. “You alright, Buffy?”

She shook her head a little, because honestly? She really was just not sure. “Sometimes I remember that this really is hell, you know?”

Then Spike's arms were around her, holding her close, and it was enough to remind her that there was reason enough to call some of it heaven.

***

So. Through the looking glass again.   
Also... HAH!  
  
I LOVED writing that chapter so hard. I've been dying to share it since whenever. June or something. GAH.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I was going to split this, but then it would've either been all reflection and no action, or the spot where I would've split it wouldn't have made any sense, so what the hey. Another long-ass chapter. Guess that's the new normal.
> 
> Hey, ho, let's go let Buffy champion it up!

“You okay, pet? With everything?”

He didn’t say a name as he followed her from bed, but he would have known she hadn’t been able to sleep. He probably could have told it from the way her heart beat or the way she was breathing or whatever, so no use pretending. 

Also, she knew how much it had probably cost him to bring it up, so might as well cop to it. “Yeah, I’ll live. Just got to figure it out and deal.”

Silence for a second, then a nod as he went to the narrow bedroom casement and leaned out to survey the unchanging landscape below. The view spread out toward downtown was sprawling, epic, russet-washed… and painful. Buffy tended to avoid it whenever possible. Too many of her childhood memories were wrapped up in the agony of ongoing destruction down there. 

Not a few new ones were being demolished, all starting with a guy who had followed her from this city to become such a huge part of her life in Sunnydale, and who had in the end left a gaping hole in her heart. A man who had forged so many of her ideals of what love was supposed to be, put so many roadblocks in the way of her future relationships, and so damaged her ability to deal with her own dual being, so that she was only just now beginning to recognize it. /God, how do I even _process_ all of that? It’s all just such a _part_ of me!/ 

Spike didn’t have to be generous about it, of course. And maybe pre-soul, he wouldn’t have been. Who knew. It was hard to tell, considering his impulsiveness, before. But now he simply nodded, pressed his head once, hard, against the stucco window frame, then gave a little shrug, tension vibrating through his body. “I get it Buffy, is the thing. Know what it’s like to want him to love you, and to always be held at a distance. To have to accept… he’ll never give that to you. What you want. That he’ll maybe promise it, but you’ll never truly have it." A swift shake of the shoulders, as if throwing something away, or casting off a yoke. "That all you’ll ever have is the kind of violence that breaks.” He shook his head then; a quick jerk as if he was worried he’d said too much, and he straightened, gripping the window frame till his knuckles were so white they looked like the bones would break through his flesh. 

Buffy bit her lip, tempted as always to walk away. But dammit; it was real, no matter how much it hurt to hear. Spike had known Angel for way longer than she had, and about time she listened when he talked about it. Time was, she had always hit back whenever he’d tried to warn her to guard her heart, had always spat obscenities and insults at him, when all he had ever tried to do was to give her the benefit of his own agonizing experience. 

/You… loved him once too, didn’t you?/

God, what a thought.

It wasn’t one she really wanted to consider, even if it was obviously a different kind of love. 

But she needed to process this. Needed to put it in its place and move forward. Angel was still around, would pop up to haunt them again. It was bound to happen. /And Spike… Spike is here, because he’ll always be with me, in a completely different way. And he’s been carrying this with me; just like he did before, with another woman he loved, for God knows how long, and…/ 

And it was time she admitted a lot of things to herself. About why _she_ was here with Spike. About… everything. Like... /I always wanted a vampire. It was just… once upon a time I wanted my vampires without risk./ 

That had been Angel, for her. Totally her supposed vamp-sans-risk. The no-gamble option. /Except unless you had sex with him, of course. Not that you knew that, until it was too late. You thought the soul tames our monsters enough to make them touchable. You thought you could could get all sexy with the parts of yourself you couldn’t face without them scaring you or hurting you. Get down with your own demons and still be 'safe'… because the metaphorical demon you were using to do it was all chained and stuff/

Dumb idea. Because that meant she wouldn’t have had to face the wild thing inside herself, either. That had kind of blown up spectacularly in her face, hadn’t it, in the most un-metaphorical way ever. /You forgot that sex is part of the id thing, right? All off the table. Off limits. Totally safe to be with Angel. Just sweet kisses and petting, and…/ God. It all sounded so childish now. So prudish, and had she always wanted to be punished in some way for the parts of her nature that were more dangerous? The hungers in her that had sprung so promptly to life after her Calling, tangled with puberty to become a monster that overwhelmed, until she couldn’t tell the difference. 

Were those hungers human? Demon? Who knew? She certainly hadn’t, and it had terrified her, the violence of them; especially once Spike had come to her to awaken them in their truest form. It had taken her years to come to terms with that reality; that it was okay to just… accept herself, as she was.

So difficult to parse her own experience. After all, she had had no other, and she had certainly learned in one fell swoop to fear the parts of her which were not Council- and society-approved as right and good. Had learned to dread those parts of herself, until eventually she had split herself into a dichotomy just as surely as any vampire to hide from the real hungers she carried inside. And in the end she, deep inside, had labeled herself ‘monster’ for them, acted as such, until she had come to believe that, as surely as with any vampire, only the overriding soul, the better angels of her nature—in effect her own human side—would keep her safe from herself. 

Reaching out to touch the cool curve of Spike’s shoulder she smiled slightly, shook her head for past foibles. /And I thought only those few vampires who’d been somehow ‘saved’ from what they were were ‘safe’ for me to touch… because the first time I got in touch with all that sexy id, look what happened./ So idiotic, and so understandable, considering the headjob that had been done on her. /And then the time I finally let myself go and let myself have it without the soul… I had to be in charge, all the time, because I was so scared that if I wasn’t, the same thing would happen. Only this time, to _me./_

Dropping her hand, she sighed internally. /All that first night with Angel really taught me was that that side of me was bad and wrong, and I had to live in some kind of constant repayment for my sins, too; just like him. For being not good enough. For wanting things I shouldn’t want. For… just being me, and what I am… when I never even had any choice in any of it./ 

It was time she recognized the truth. /I was so much like Angel, wasn’t I?/ Spike was right the whole time. For too many years she had tried to be like her ex. Angel was probably partially attractive to her because of that weird, sexless, Christlike carrying of the sins of all. She had wanted him partially _because_ of the denial, the ‘don’t fuck till you pop, celibacy and suffering’ fantasy; as if that was the only measure of virtue. /And maybe it had to be the thing that worked for him. But I've found out it's totally unrealistic for me. And I'm not gonna be ashamed of it anymore./ 

Eyes drawn ineluctably back to Spike, who had shown her that and more, Buffy smiled as she watched the muscles work in his finely-sculpted back. /You were there all along, weren’t you, trying to tell me that there was an alternative. Whispering to me from the shadows to ask me, ‘Why? Why deny myself?’ Telling me that I can contain it, because I’m strong enough. That I can be both; be all of me. That it’s even okay, to embrace what I am./ 

That was what he had been saying from the start. Why not embrace the sex and the wild and the violence, and see where ‘sin’ took her? And she had been so terrified to end up like Faith, or like Angelus—of becoming that which she fought—that she had _hated_ him for his own freedom of self; for his mixture of demonic freedom and his obvious humanity like an advertisement that this too could be a thing she might have and hold if she but dared. Had hated him for the way he showed her what was already within her. /So I ended up driving you to ensoul yourself as punishment for that freedom… and for the fact that you’ve never been ashamed of what you are./ 

She had seen the soul is as much a collar for the demon as she had seen the chip as a muzzle; except to her mind the latter was dangerous and temporary, even cruel, and the former… a gift. /But if the soul was a punishment for Angelus because he obviously despised it, denied it for all of his years…/ She eyed the man she’d chosen, standing there, limned in orange light. /For you it’s been like… maybe barely an inconvenience. Even sometimes a kind of reluctant ally, huh?/ 

Because, as ever, Spike had found his own way. Just as, for him, he treated the deadliest of vampire afflictions—the sun, crosses, his diet—as minor aggravations, he had come at the soul the same way; and his insanely adaptable demon had, as ever, gotten right around it. And come back, grinning and almost self-assured as ever. /And God, Spike, do I ever love you for it. I wish I was half so… bounce-back-able./ Beside him, sometimes she felt so… brittle. But he gave her hope. 

And besides... his doing so, yet again, meant that, there, sitting next to his soul, was living proof; there was nothing wrong with him. Had never _been_ anything wrong with him, from the start.

And maybe that meant… there was nothing wrong with her, either. /We just _are_./ “Hey. Whatever processing I have to do about the past… I’m here. And I know exactly why I’m here. I know exactly how I got here, and why I came.” Moving closer, she lifted her hand tentatively, touched his back. “I love _you_, Spike.” 

He shivered, turned a little toward her. “I know it. But you’re allowed to have a few bad days over it. I won’t begrudge you. Had enough of my own over this sort of thing, yeah, so…”

She shut him up with a simple kiss. Just a brush of the lips, but it did the trick. He fell silent, eyeing her speculatively.

Patting his butt all casually, she nodded out at the vista she couldn’t quite face. “Your Champion insists you shut up and enjoy the moment. I’m right here.”  
  
He groaned and rolled his eyes, diverted. “That just sounds so sodding odd, though. Not that I’m not bloody grateful, but are you sure you want to do this, Buffy? This going back into the limelight thing? I know you’re enjoying this…”

Giving him a little shove to turn him back around, Buffy leaned her forehead against his shoulder-blade so that he could continue to look out at the denuded landscape of Hell-A while she avoided the view. “Vacation?” It sounded like a ludicrous word, considering what they beheld outside the window, but, “I am, in a way. In some ways I’m more human here than I’ve been since I was Called. It’s… healing, I guess. And maybe I’ve needed that. But…” A tiny shrug. “I need to take some kind of action, Spike. I need to find my place here. This feels like _it.”_ She smiled slightly against the cool skin of his back, kissed him, felt his flesh ripple pleasantly in reaction. “Even though the role-reversal’s kind of…” She paused a little, absorbing it. “Well, I mean, I guess it’s kind of par for the course, here, huh? Back home you became my Champion, so here if I’m yours, that makes you the Chosen One.”

Spike snorted. “Don’t be daft, pet.”  
  
She slid her fingers up his side, counting his ribs. “Does that make this Wonderland?”

“Mad bint.” Slapping a hand over hers to trap her fingers, he lifted them to his lips, kissed them. “Besides, who the hell would be the White Queen and who would be the Red in this situation?”

/Um, okay?/ “I dunno, I only saw the made-for-TV version, and I was like nine.”

He scoffed slightly. “Well, suffice it to say we need to know a whole bloody lot more about the players before we can say who’s who in this debacle, Love.”

“Uhuh.” Amused, she wriggled her hand free from his loosened grip to stroke his pecs lightly; not with any goal in mind, but just because she enjoyed touching him. “You know, you use a whole lot more big words when we start talking about books.”

Spike fell conspicuously silent, eyes focused on the view outside. After a long moment Buffy broke the stalemate, still caressing his chest softly. “It’s just… Okay.” How to… “Maybe this’ll sound weird, but… Sometimes I don’t know where I go, here. Like the sun. Here, it vanishes at night. Back home, at least I knew… it was always day somewhere, and I could rest.” She wasn’t sure if she was making even a little bit of sense, but she felt like she was, somehow. Or maybe she was talking out of a dream. She’d had a serious ton of dreams last ‘night’, mostly about the way the sun and moon here moved in tandem, linked together, and about the depthless darkness of the rare, impenetrable nights. It had spooked her. /I need to know what the sun is doing./

After a short, thoughtful pause, Spike nodded. “Yeah. I get that, Slayer. I get what you’re saying.”

Buffy frowned against his shoulder. “Do you? Because I’m not even sure _I_ do.”  
  
He chuckled then, the sound echoing through his torso to vibrate her ear against his back. “I love you, Buffy. And until we figure out a way to get you the hell out of here…” Swinging very abruptly around, he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her up tight against him, buried his face in her neck. “I’m so bloody grateful and so unbelievably proud to have you as my sodding Champion. You have no bloody clue.”

He trusted her to do it. He had never once protested, never tried to protect her out of her choices, never tried to take her place in her work. And he would never leave her alone while she did it, no matter what it cost both of them; would instead work with her to make it work... because that’s what Spike did. /That’s what _we_ do./ 

Outside the window, beyond Spike’s shoulder, the moon and sun of this dimension remained locked together in tandem, as if bearing a lesson. The moon did not chase the sun here, desperate and only reflecting glory, was not burnt; was a disc untouched. They were a unit, moved as one, stood side-by-side.

Spike had stood by her side, silent and stalwart on the roof yesterday, while the ‘facts’ of her past had fallen around her ears. That moment had broken her clean, for the last time, from Angel, made it very clear the many ways in which her perceptions on love had been altered by their ill-fated affair. /And what it did to me and you./ 

It was weird, looking at what she had gone through with Spike through new eyes. Because up on that roof was just like that night in that strange house in Sunnydale, before the Final Apocalypse. Without him at her back up there, she would have been lost at sea; broken loose in a storm like a bark cast adrift and buffeted by a loss of all definitions.

Instead he had been there, silent and solid to remind her of what was real; something to cling to until she could reset herself in the one thing that made sense. /Spike will always be there for me./ He was her solid port in the storm; always there when needed, in some form or another, even before their current incarnation. Speaking the truth whether she was ready for it or not, helping her to grow. Giving all of himself in the fight and from his heart... and ready to follow her lead once she had found her strength again, reset her definitions, rebirthed herself into new form, even if it meant altering himself utterly to do so. Instead of trying to keep her the same he helped her to adapt, and he was a sheltering stone when the storms buffeted, keeping the worst of the damage from her when she was raw from the chrysalis. Because change was always violent, for her, tearing her asunder. 

For him... it just was. 

/I made the right choice. You’re the right choice for me. Which means all this? This is right for me too. Being here with you, like this. You being here with me like this. All of it. I might even... deserve it./   
  
/I just have to keep deserving it./ “Look out there,” she told her vampire quietly, and gave him a little push, gestured toward the window. “Whatever we can do, right?”

He looked obediently, catching her hand in his. Squeezed it. “Yeah. One thing I promised m’self when I agreed to stay on with Peaches. Help the bloody helpless and all that rot, if I couldn’t bring my nancy arse to face you. Now I get to do both, innit? Dunno about any ‘chosen’ nonsense, but I can see us bein’ Champions together.” He shot her a faint quirk of a grin. “Might even feel like I’ve earned it someday if I do it long enough.”

She squeezed his hand in reply, aware he might never believe it of himself. “You’re a dope.”

He of course got that look on his face that said he was pleased. After all, he knew what it meant when she said that. 

After a long moment she laid her free hand in the center of his back, felt him pull in an unneeded breath in response. “I don't know. Maybe this topsy-turvy thing is some kind of weird payment plan or something. I dunno about you, but for me it's like… the Powers never give me what I want, you know? I’m almost superstitious about it at this point. I can go around being terrified that the rug’s gonna get pulled out from under me at any moment, or I can think this is only happening ‘cause I’m not under Their thumb right now, here in hell, and worry about why I can only get rewards when I’m in a kingdom ruled by hellgods…”

His voice went tight. “Buffy, pet, don’t…”

She bit her lip at the pained note he betrayed. “Don’t worry. I’m not guilting myself. I’m a little freaked, obviously, because I’m totally trained to think that being, you know, contented with my life means that something terrible’s about to happen or that I’m sinning or something, that I don’t deserve it or that I’m falling down on the job, and I have to sit here every second thinking obviously it’s my fault those people are suffering out there, that I should be out there twenty-four-seven trying to save every person…”

“Oh, Christ, Love…”

“I know. Intellectually I know I can’t. We just got back from a patrol. We’ll go out again in a few hours. We’re doing all we can. And now I’m gonna take on this Champion thing, which means taking on some of these bigger demon-lords head-on and seeing if we can make some real dents in this thing, now that everything’s starting to shake down into serious territories. Maybe it’ll end up being the thing that really helps, instead of us just grabbing a few survivors here and there, and I’ll be able to stop hearing them calling for help in my head…” His muscles tensed, and she dug her fingertips into his chest, stilling him. “I do better, Spike, when I have a distinct job, a specific territory to protect. I haven’t had that since Sunnydale. I’ve had ‘wander around and do odd jobs to stave off the grief’…”

“Buffy… Oh, hell…”

She cut him off before he could get too remorseful. “I’ve had, ‘roving Slayer-trainer’. I’ve had ‘build small cells’ leader, and I just started ‘Slayer-general-chick’. None of ‘em really fit me, you know? This…” She managed a tiny shrug. “Till now, all I could think of was that it's maybe kind of incidental that I'm enjoying my life; almost like it's an unexpected side-effect rather than some kind of reward, since I never seem to get those until I die. So either I have to justify myself here by taking a territory and defending it like I did Sunnydale, with you, or I have to assume the Powers sent me here for whatever reason, and being with you is it, so this ‘being happy’ thing is just a side-benefit to keep me doing what They want me to do.”

Spike made a face she could hear in his voice. “You made the bloody choice, Love. It was yours. Don’t let Them take it from you. Maybe you’re feeling good because for the first bleedin' time in your life you’re doing something for you instead of because it’s a sodding duty, and to hell with the consequences.”

“Well, that’s terrifying.”

He chuckled again, and she had to laugh ruefully at herself at the thought. “Well, if They didn't really plan for me to be here... If I just happened to wander into LA at the right time through my own free will and they're taking advantage of it, then… Then that means I just happened to get what I wanted in the process by total accident, and that’s…” /Ugh./

“Not by accident, Buffy. Because you wanted it, and you’re a bird as gets what she wants.” God, he sounded certain.

Buffy snorted. “I’m the kind of person who runs away from what she wants, screaming, because what I actually want terrifies me.”

“But you came.” His voice was quiet.

“Yeah.” /I did./ “I ran to you. This time. Because to hell with it. I was done.” She tightened her fingers in his chest, dug her nails in a little, remembering that he was real, solid, here with her. "Because I couldn't do anything else. Because I was standing still, and that was like dying slow, and I needed to remember what living felt like. And for me, that's you." She kissed his back again, breathed in deep, inhaling his scent. "Just you." 

He trembled slightly against her hand. “You have no bloody idea how that makes me feel, pet.”

Stepping closer, Buffy pressed her cheek to his collarbone. “I think… maybe I do, now.”

They remained still for a while, her breathing him in, him still against her, then, “Those sodding powers used you like a hawk, Buffy. You know how hawking works?”

/Buh?/ “Need more information.”

“Falconry, Love. How you train a hawk to the glove is, you capture it young, take it from the mother’s nest, keep it hungry. It’s called keeping it keen. You only feed it just enough that it stays alive, but never enough that it’s completely full, so that it stays utterly dependent on the falconer… because at heart the hawk’s a wild animal, yeah? Not domesticated at all, so training it to the glove is not about teaching it to love you so much as it is teaching it to need you." His voice was incredibly bleak, unbelievably pained. "Then, if you've done your work right, when you finally release it to hunt for you it’ll come back to the glove, because by then it’s learned that it’s dependent. So it’ll bring its kill back to the falconer, for all it can hunt for itself and doesn’t actually need the falconer at all to keep itself fed. It’s learned dependence, keepin’ that wild thing keen. But if the falcon ever realizes that it can feed itself in the wild, ever tastes of the thing it chases out there and learns it doesn’t need the falconer to feed itself, it will flee the glove and the hood that blinds it, and go wild again, and never do the work of the hand that enslaves it, and it will be free.”

/Oh God./ Floored, Buffy felt like she should sit. “But… if a Slayer’s the falcon, then the falconer’s the Powers, or the Watchers…”

“And the food is love. Yeah, pet.” Spike covered her hand in his, nodded once, voice hard. “And when you hunt with hawks, sometimes they go after rabbits and the like. But when you go out with the cream of the crop, the finest falcons, they go after other birds, and strike them down. Only the best against the best game, as is the most similar to them. Those, you send after their own kind, and hope they never realize, in the joy of flight and the joy of the fight, that their few tastes of freedom are bein' used against 'em to destroy their cousins.”

Buffy closed her eyes against his throat, feeling nauseous. “And they're so desperate for it that they never realize what they’re doing.”

“No doubt.”

“Because they’ve been brainwashed.”

“Get ‘em young, keep ‘em keen. But then, they're apex predators, Love. In the wild they'd do the same. Strike down the game birds." A faint shrug. "It's just, in the wild, it's their choice. Hunt, mate, just sit in the sun and be free. So sometimes the older falcons rebel. Start to stray too far, have to be retired before they escape…”

Buffy bit her lip. “Or maybe the falconer can find a way to use them?" The realization was bitter ashes in her throat. "If They give them something they desperately need, to keep them fed. One last reward, as long as they do the work. A trade.”

“Maybe.” A slow, lazy smile entered Spike’s voice then. “You decide you wanna eat me, Slayer, I’m game. Just give me fair warning first, yeah?”

Buffy couldn’t quite see the humor right now. “How is it fair that They essentially captured and half-tamed a… prey bird or whatever just so that I can be…”

“Oi! Half-tamed? I take exception to…”

Her nails digging into his chest, into the scars over his heart, halting him. “Your choice, I know. You did most of it on your own. But still." He subsided, reading her escalated heartbeat. "And then there’s the whole thing where now I’m freaking out that They might take you away from me, because what if this is only just ‘cause it's working for Them right now? I mean, what if this is just because we’re _here? _ Because that means I wouldn’t be getting this ‘reward’ for any other reason. Not unless it's something that works for Them in the moment, which means They can take it away, and what if we get out of here, and something happens to us…” Buffy was almost hyperventilating now, and Spike tightened his arms abruptly, cutting off her runaway train of thought. Crushed her to his chest, pressed his lips to the top of her head. 

“To hell with the sodding Powers That Be, Buffy, and what they want from us or for us, alright? I’m not leaving you, and you came to me; so this is it, yeah? End of. I promise you. Right?”

Buffy lifted her eyes to his, arrested by the fierceness in his tones, the faintest hint of a question in his voice. Lifted her hand to touch his cheek in response, mustered up a smile, tremulous though it was. For a person as buffeted about by fate as she had been, he knew what he was asking. But yes. She would answer, as firmly as she knew how. “Right. I’m not letting you get away again.”

His eyes warmed, tropical blue. “Well, that’s fine, then, since I never planned to go anywhere.” Crushing her back to his chest, he sighed. “Look, Buffy. “I know I left you the once. And that taught me something. I finally understand how it must have been for you when you did your part, and you died and shuffled off this mortal coil and all that rot. You earned your peace and then you got dragged back into it. It isn't fair and it isn't right that you have to go on fighting anyway, no more than it is that I have to do the same. But if this is the reward we both get for our coming back to slog on, then I say we take it and run, yeah?” 

She shook against him, stunned with the realization that he and he alone in the world actually _got_ it. That he was the only one who really _could_. 

“Even if it is some kind of mistake in the paperwork, because some secretary jotted us down in the wrong column for something in the middle of making sure something else happened, Buffy, we take it and run, okay? Because this is _ours,_ and we’ve _earned_ it.”

Buffy nodded and held to him. /I can accept that. I can accept that _he_ has, at least, and if he can accept that I have, then.../ “This is our heaven.”

“Yeah. Only one I’ll ever get. And Love?” And here he lifted her chin, grinned into her eyes. “I’ll do my damnedest to make it heaven enough for you to make it worth your while till you go back.”

She smiled back, unsure how she had ever been anything less than stupid in love with this vampire. “You’re doing a damn good job so far.”

“Well. Cheers, pet. That’s good to know.” And he kissed her.

***

Her opportunity to play ‘champion’ came sooner than one might have thought… though it actually turned out to be more in the nature of theater than anything. Having run out of people to rescue from the hills, they spent most of their time anymore down in the endless, close and sweaty labyrinth of the city itself. It had seemed the best strategy over the last two weeks since, as Spike put it, “Sweetie-bear brought us the newsreel”. (He’d had to work hard to get back into her good graces after that thoughtless little quip.) After all, probably everybody up in the richer, broader lands of 90210 had either starved, fled, or hidden themselves away in some fabulous bomb shelters by now, and anyone who needed their help was going to be down in the city dodging agents of one DL or another. Apparently now that the power vacuums had all settled out to something steady, they were all seeking fresh slaves or concubines or whatnot, and pickings were getting slim. 

The new patrol tactic left them to range the narrow, unclaimed grounds between WeHo and Century City on the daily, combing for refugees from Downtown LA’s (apparently incredibly nasty) demon lord, Burge as he expanded ever westward. The hulking creature, who, per some of their escapees, looked like a vast, animated gargoyle and had a taste for human flesh, sounded like a real treat, and apparently owned something like a small army of demons that he used to 'man' the entire sweep of downtown from around Boyle Heights all the way to approximately Koreatown. Maybe even Mid-City, depending on who you talked to, because he wanted to be The Player. Rumor had it he had co-opted most of the remnants of the army that the Senior Partners had sent after them that rainy night that now seemed so long ago, out behind Angel’s old hotel base, as well as any number of wing’ed things and who knew what the hell else he could manage to get under his sway down there. 

Definitely the most dangerous of the bunch, and okay. Buffy was not exactly Angel’s biggest fan at the moment, but she by far did not envy her ex his position right smack in the middle of _that_ hot mess. And she was for sure grateful that he was there to help get civilians out of that mess. Now that the city was shaking down into some serious centers of power, the only DL with a worse reputation had been Kr’ph, the Lord of Westwood. Thus, while Buffy wasn’t exactly best pleased that the fledgling Gunn had killed him—by, of all things, ripping something out of the center of his skeletal, gooey blue chest?—and blamed it on Spike, at least the guy had ended a serious reign of terror. 

They’d heard all about it when they’d started getting the few surviving refugees from Westwood’s truly hellish realm. It seemed that Kr’ph had been famous for making human males into gladiators for his amusement, and turning human females into…

Well. Suffice it to say it didn’t take three guesses. /And can we say ew./

In comparison, Beverly Hills’ closest solidified neighbors, Century City and WeHo, were downright tame. Just ye standard demon mischief-scapes. They got refugees from those realms as well, of course, since no one in their right minds wanted to stay under any demon’s rule. Century City, once wedged between them and the thunderdome that had grown up in Westwood, was seriously expanding into the dead Kr’ph’s territory; and, no doubt, doing its best to edge away from the rumored Old One stationed in Beverly Hills.   
  
The Century City DL was very mysterious. They’d heard rumors of something with red eyes and no face, wrapped in a turban, which all really just made Buffy think of that creepy guy who had actually been pals with Giles back in the day, and had helped them fake out Faith so she’d thought Angel’s soul was gone. Who knew if this guy in the CC was even remotely the same type, but so far he was at least avoiding any contact with Spike and Illyria. Which was nice, since he was basically right on their southwest flank like a little limpet. 

WeHo on the other hand…

They needed to watch out for him. They’d gotten a whole pack of terrified immigrants the other day, tore up as anything Buffy had ever seen, wide-eyed and almost senseless with terror, incapable of making a single bit of sense. All they had gotten from any of them had been muttered, disjointed phrases between the rocking and the crying; about a ‘devil’, and red skin and horns, and the feeling of something ‘crawling around’ in their minds. 

Clearly the DL of WeHo was some kind of telepath. And just as clearly, he wasn’t all that gentle about it when he snacked on the emotions he inveigled from human minds. 

Probably he really enjoyed the misery he evoked, knowing the nastier demons. Bastard.

Actually, when you got down to it, Beverly Hills' entire workable territory was kind of on a northwest-to-southeast trajectory, since there was no current ‘last-DL-standing’ to claim Central LA till one ran into Gunn’s purported vamp-kingdom in sort of South-Central. They had heard some vague rumors of some other frightening individual having set up somewhere way down near Compton, but that was far outside their sphere of operations, and behind them there was just a whole lot of nothing anymore in between the Hills and the bitchy and ineffectual little Lord of Sherman Oaks. They hadn’t heard anything yet about his champion, if he had one, but he definitely was the type to work more through third parties, or at least that was the reputation he was building. Fond of assassins, they said. 

Their only other surviving neighbor was way on the other side of Griffith Park; the slightly more deadly-sounding Lord of Burbank, who one of their escapee demons had informed them was a slinky, pale, winged female creature with a taste for human males and a purported fondness for hot pokers. Which, okay. Just really all made Buffy feel worse and worse every day for every second she spent actually enjoying her time here in this fucked up dimension. Reports like those were what drove her out of their suite multiple times a day anymore—because God, the days were endless, here!—incapable of sitting still as the sounds of torment floated through the windows to grate on her soul. 

She wasn’t even sure half the time if she was actually _hearing_ the constant screams anymore, or if she was just imagining them; a recording played by her guilty mind to keep her on edge. After all, no doubt most of the people who had spent their first weeks in hell running around like rabbits trying to hide had long since been rounded up into cages by the various demon lords and were being used for god alone knew what kind of unimaginable amusements.

But she couldn’t help those. She could only help the ones who got away. At least right now. 

That was, until they came up with a workable plan. 

At this particular moment she was sliding from one building to another somewhere off of Hillsboro, Spike at her left shoulder. They both craned around the corner of a building at the same moment, checking their egress out of the alley that currently sheltered them. “What do you think?” she asked tensely, axe in hand.

“Dunno. Too bloody quiet.”

“I know. It feels wrong.”

“Too right it does. Makes my teeth itch.”

She scoffed and slipped her free hand back to cup his knee briefly. “I’m supposed to be the only thing that makes your teeth itch anymore.” Shot a quick glance up at his profile, hovering over her head. It was still weird to look at him in daylight… but she really liked it. With the unrelenting heat it always felt like high noon here, but the light always looked like it was hovering on the verge of some perpetual sunset; like those times when she had once waited, on edge, for the night to fall so that she could come to him and say she was ‘just in the neighborhood’. But that had meant she could never look at him in the last vestiges of light. Could only see him, be with him in the dark. The night had been their time, before.

Now… they could claim the dusk, too, and the glory of sunset, and it felt like some kind of symbolic thing that just escaped her grasp. Like maybe they were finally drawing closer together; meeting in the middle like she had hoped they could in actual fact. Or…

“You know you do.” Spike pulled his head back, all wariness, but she could feel the slight note of relaxation her quip had brought. Still, the tension remained as his gaze roamed uncertainly around their position. “Bleeding city feels like a storm or something right now; just hangin’ over our heads.” His eyes scanned the unchanged, rust-colored sky, gripping his mace in both hands. “Don’t like it much, pet.”

What he didn’t like was her new, constant drive to be out, more or less every second, to hunt for survivors. To bring them home to the Pink Palace, and bundle them off to the cop and Connor’s girlfriend, and her ex’s damn werewolf ex. The safehouse was bulging at the seams, and loaded with people they could scarcely take care of, some of them were so bad off. And there had been losses, of course. Far more than in the beginning, when they hadn’t been able to save everyone. 

Those memories only drove her on, and harder. She didn’t sleep much anymore, and not well when she did. Tough enough when the day was three days long, counting the nights. She knew it was driving Spike to distraction, worrying about her and the way she was running herself ragged. But. It wasn’t like he slept at all in this dimension either. He didn’t need to, without their sun to force him undercover. He slept when she slept, which was…

Well. When the screams in her head let her. Usually only when he managed to screw her into a stupor. But you could only have so much sex, even with their combined stamina; and sometimes nowadays even that didn’t work. Hard to concentrate on even the most amazing sex at the hands of the most incredible vampire lover when you knew that there were people out there suffering, and you were in there just _enjoying_ yourself…

Buffy tensed, fighting with the urge to just _go_. _Do_. Make something _happen_, before it drove her insane. Shifted, preparatory to making a dash out, and felt him tense behind her, ready to back her play. They would make for the wide, clear space that was Robertson Boulevard; their last big dash before they could sink back into the obscurity of housing tracts for a while. 

Of course, the very instant they left the shelter of the alley, all hell broke loose. Because that was the way hell worked. Obviously.

It started with the screaming. It always did these days, so that was nothing particularly new. But the sound did have the effect of kicking them into an even higher gear. 

They pounded around the next corner in perfect tandem, and opened out onto the middle of the next intersection to a fairly terrible sight. 

Three humans, tattered and in some sort of broken manacles, were being terrorized by what looked like… giant baby bats? The things were clustered around them like tiny dinosaurs; maybe four feet high each but with pretty massive wingspans—eight feet each easy. Maybe ten—and were darting their heads outward to scream and nip at their prey with gleaming, serrated teeth and wide, screaming bat-faces, their extremely overdone ears standing up like a bunch of flying, pissed off chihuahuas on steroids. 

And there were at least twenty of them. Which, honestly, was probably the only reason the hapless, entangled humans were still alive, if cut up. The beasts kept getting in each other’s way in their attempts to crowd in and get a mouthful. Not that Buffy and Spike took a moment to count or anything. They just waded in.

It was actually spectacularly easy to fight the bizarrely overgrown bat-demons; at least at first. For one thing, they had been uber-focused on playing with their food, and hadn’t been paying the slightest attention to their surroundings, which was dumb of them. /Mistake number one./ The second thing; they were bad at fighting. Seemed really clumsy on the ground… which Buffy supposed made sense, for aerial creatures, though why they didn’t just take off and attack from the vantage of the air was beyond her. Maybe they needed wide spaces and a running start? 

So much the better for her side. 

What really ended up happening was they basically forgot the three tore-up humans and just swarmed Buffy and Spike, spitting in incoherent rage. Which might have worked if they didn’t make mistake number three and do the exact thing they had done when they’d been trying to make a meal out of the triad over there a second ago; i.e., completely impede each other in their eagerness.

/No battle strategy. Man, these things are dumb./

It was laughably easy to take off one snarling, spitting head after another. All she had to do was focus on ducking the wildly beating wings with their single, tall and pointy claw up top, because getting raked by that thing would have sucked. And probably given her an infection she didn’t want in hell, the land of zero hospitals. After all, Slayer strength could only do so much… and she got the feeling these bat things were carrion eaters that didn’t bathe all that often.

They really, _really_ stank. Like, oh my god, go to the salon and get a shampoo, stat. Talk about odors that registered high on the ‘fetid-to-rotten-meat’ scale…

She ducked another swing by a wing-claw, lopped off a head, and quipped because she couldn’t help it. Not that she thought the audience would appreciate her wit in this neck of the woods. “Sorry. I only get my haircuts from licensed cosmeticians.”

At her back, Spike snorted as he split another’s head in half with his mace. “You might be out of luck on that one for a while, Goldilocks, less we find one in that bunch of scared poultry. Might have to let me do you if you’re hankering for a bit of a snip.”

She swung away from his side long enough to shear a wing from her next contestant, ran the pointy bit of her axe through an eye, resettled her back solidly against his. “I trust you with a lot of things, Spike. My sister, my life, my body. My heart... but not my hair. You’d probably… Ugh!” _Duck_. “Give me some kind of weird punk haircut that I’d have to…” _Swing_. “Live down for a year.”

“Would look dead sexy on you, Love.” He grunted as well, shimmying to his left away from a slicing blow from one wing, and she turned a little to swing for him, protecting his weak side as they opened up. Caught the offending claw and amputated it before coming back around on the backswing to remove a shrieking bat head. “Ta.” 

“Always.”

“And it isn’t like the Scoobies are here to… pass judgment on it,” he argued his case, shoulders shifting sexily as he swung against his opponents.

“That’s not really the… point. I’m not going to shave… one side of my head, or something… just to…” She paused, blinking some kind of nasty, thick blood out of her eyes, and shoved back said offending hair to stare around her. “Is that it? I swear there were at least twenty of those things.”

“Twenty-five or more, by my count. Huh.” He turned to her, grinning, tongue rolled behind his tongue. “Nice workout, yeah pet?”

She grinned at his suggestive smirk, feeling unbelievably improved and measurably more relaxed for the exercise. “Keep it PG. We have guests.”

He sighed in a put-upon way and turned back toward the civilians. “Oi. You lot alright?”

He was answered by a lot of wide-eyed stares and shocked faces. 

Sigh. Time to go into mental First Aid mode. These looked like they had escaped durance vile at some DL’s lovely home or another. “Hey. I don’t know what you guys survived, but if you head toward Beverly Hills with us you’ll be safe, and we’ll…”

She wasn’t looking up—a consequence of having to navigate stepping over the wall of bat corpses they’d created around themselves—and so she didn’t see the threat before it was too late. And Spike… Well. He appeared to sense it. Maybe he smelled it coming, or felt the shadow. But it was still too late. Especially since the roar came in the exact instant that the talons closed over one of each of their shoulders, piercing hard through clothing to stab into flesh. 

Buffy almost dropped her axe as the thing dragged her abruptly up into the air. Grabbed the rough leg, biting back a pained scream as the boulevard dropped away below, the tops of coral-lit houses and pitted devastation becoming smaller and smaller, till the tiny huddle of broken humans and the circle of bat-carnage vanished amidst the general details of hell. 

Out of instinct, she brandished her axe, prepared to chop her way free. And felt Spike’s hand catch her wrist, holding her still. Her eyes jerked over, filled with tears as the agony of the tearing wind lanced through her, twisting her in the thing’s grip. “Don’t, Buffy!” She could barely hear him through the whistle of their passage, but she could see his mouth move, see the terror of it in his eyes. “If it drops us, you’ll die.”

She knew he was right. Though all she wanted was for the incredible pain to stop, she had dealt with pain before. She fought back the instinct; tussled it down… and forced herself to watch where they were going through tear-bleary eyes. 

They were turning west. She could see the ocean gleaming orange-lit ahead, over the tops of the burning houses.

Overhead, a vast voice called in a cold shriek, “I come, Bro’os. I come with gifts.”

***

She recognized the Santa Monica Pier at the same time as Spike did. Saw him point, exclaim at the unlit Ferris wheel, though the vocalization was torn from his throat by the wind, just as their aerial captor began to circle, heading downward toward God alone knew what goal. From their current, painful vantage all she could really see were dozens of unrecognizable rooftops, all painted uniformly in that hateful orange glare. 

They seemed to be veering toward one structure in particular, though; a multi-lobed, glassy building with dozens of connected roofs right on the waterfront. A hotel, no doubt, and oh joy. 

They were being taken to a demon lord’s palace.

As their in-flight bat-radio shrieked his message once more—“I come, Bro’os!”—and careened toward a large, open, white-railed balcony in the center of what looked like a fantasy of white and gray calypso décor, Spike shot her a glance under the abating thunder. “Get ready!”

She already was, and gripped her axe tighter in both hands, though the move dragged hard against the talons secured in her injured shoulder and made the wound scream in agony. 

When the beast dragged them to a landing and dropped them to a tiled floor so that it could skid to a stop somewhere off to one side, both she and Spike rolled expertly and came to their feet in tandem crouches, bleeding but battle-ready, shoulder-to shoulder. And since the thing had picked them up as they had been standing mid-fight, they were already set right; she to the right, he to the left. 

Buffy swung her eyes swiftly around the arena, taking stock before the fight. To one side, now preening its wings, stood the thing that had carried them off; yet another bat, unsurprisingly, if one about four times the size of the brood that had been busy trying to pick off the trio of lost humans up in Beverlywood. It stood, tipsy and massive on its legs; about ten feet tall and with a wingspan she really honestly couldn’t credit right now—thirty feet, maybe? The damn thing was almost as big as Angel’s freaking dragon!—futzing with its hairy chest like nothing had really occurred. 

For the first time she noticed that a couple of the little baby night-birds had survived their tete a tete down on Robertson. Maybe they’d retreated during the fight to go get mama or something, because at least three were huddled behind the larger bat-demon, having probably trailed it in while Buffy and her vampire consort were busy dangling and trying not to scream in pain. The larger bat nosed at its much-whittled brood and nudged them away, at which point the three tiny things swung around, made a run for it, and managed an ungainly sort of swooping start that got them clumsily airborne. They made for the rafters and hung themselves upside down therefrom, squawking and squabbling while they looked down on the scenery. 

Buffy really, really hoped they wouldn’t poop on their heads. 

There was no one else in the wide-open space right now. A bunch of chairs arranged at the front of the room. A big seat at the other, facing out toward the ocean. A clear set-up. “Think we’ve found the throne-room?” she quipped, not quite looking at Spike.

“I’ll wager we’re about to find out who the mystery lord of the pier might be, yeah,” he agreed. “Don’t know anyone named Bro’os…” He frowned a little, looking frustrated, as he looked around him. “It’s a damn nice place. Should have got us some beachfront property.”

She elbowed him and eyed the giant bat. “Maybe we should try to get _out_ of here before whoever Bro’os is shows up,” she hissed. “We can take it.”

Spike grunted and hefted his mace. Worked his shoulder a little. “Might have done, if it weren’t for the giblets three up there,” he answered, pointing with his chin at the batlings roosting above. “Not sure we can manage big mama there and an aerial attack all at once with all these holes in us.” His eyes jerked over to focus a little too hard on her shoulder. “Don’t like how much you’re bleedin’, Buffy.”

Blood was seeping, dark and slow, from his own shoulder wounds, which, unfortunately, had been taken in his left side. “Look who’s talking.”

“Oh, I’ll do. Don’t have a heart pumping it away every second like you do.” His lip twisted, though his eyes never ceased casting about for invisible dangers. “Damn liability, hearts. Always said it.”

She smiled grimly as she repositioned herself. Pondered starting the fight anyway, or maybe just making a break for the railing and swinging over it toward the sand. How big a drop could it be, really? And fifty-fifty chance of sand versus concrete at the bottom? “Yeah, I noticed it slowed you down considerably once yours resurfaced and turned you into my personal slave.”

“Now that’s hitting below the belt, luv. No reason to get all… ”

The doors at the far end of the room, behind and beside the ‘throne’, burst open very suddenly, and a startlingly familiar, thick voice preceded the entrance of the latest comer. “So, what have you brought me today, my Champion? Something tasty? Something soft? Something… _Gah!”_

Halting abruptly in front of them as if he had been harpooned, Teeth, the literal loan-shark from Sunnydale stared at them in utter horror.

“Oh, bloody, buggering hell,” Spike muttered, and lowered his mace. “Are you sodding _kidding_ me?”

Buffy felt a very sudden, very out of place urge to burst out laughing. Despite the agony in her shoulder it took serious effort to control the surge of insane mirth. Should she just throw away her axe right now? Sit down hard on the floor of this gorgeous waterfront hotel and giggle a little? The huge, keyed-up tension of the last half hour had completely dissolved, leaving behind a shaking adrenaline crash, and the whole thing right now just felt like a gigantic joke. 

Though… maybe not to their host. No longer dressed in a burgundy suit but in something that looked like Armani, the loan-shark still looked unbelievably uncomfortable. Transfixed, even, and his eyes bulged about as much as was possible in his narrow skull. She thought his flippery ‘hands’ where trembling. Clearly he was less than enthused with the ‘catch’ his champion had brought him. “Drugas, what the hell did you _do?”_ he demanded in a low, horrified whisper. 

“I brought you these. They both have souls, Boss, so I thought…”

“Oh, you’re worthless. Get out of here before I turn you into a skeet target.” The shark-headed demon waved his bat off like it was a fly.

“I wish to eat one. These ones destroyed all but three of my young…”

“Well that’s what you get!” Teeth half-shrieked, rounding abruptly on the giant bat. “What were you _thinking_, flying so far inland to hunt them, you idiot? Did you go all the way to Beverly Hills? Do you know who this _is?_” The tiny nostrils flared on the end of his pointed shark’s nose, scenting Buffy’s blood, and he seemed to shrink even further into the too-broad shoulders of the obviously-not-tailored Armani. “What did you _do?”_

The bat stared back, dumbly. “We were in unclaimed territory…”

“I don’t give a damn if you were in the San Bernardino National Bushes, you fool; you may have started an inter-demon incident, if not just handed me my head! This is one of the demon lords of Beverly Hills; a vampire who kills his own kind as soon as looks at them… And _her!_ Do you have any…” He subsided abruptly, shaking and looking like he was about to fall apart. “Get out of here. Just get out of here. You complete waste of wing-skin. You’re lucky you have any pups _left.”_

The bat-thing retreated, looking as put out and taken aback as anything with a pissed-off mouse-face could actually look, and sidled awkwardly through the big double doors, hunching to do so. The three remaining baby bat-demons detached themselves from the rafters to sail along after it; mindless little copies of their parent.

The instant they were gone, the shark-headed grifter-cum-demon lord was approaching them, slowly and deferentially and sounding nothing like the self-assured and dignified—if lowlife—businessman he had been in Sunnydale. “Slayer. I deeply apologize for any inconvenience… I obviously had no idea you were in our charming demon version of Los Angeles, but be welcome, please…” Buffy thought that maybe the pressures of rulership had not been kind to Teeth, the way he was darn near dithering and the oily way he was rubbing his flippery hands together. “And Mr. Spike. A pleasure, as always. Ah, yes. Welcome to my palace; to my little kingdom here in Santa Monica. I assure you, we will clean up this little misunderstanding, no harm no foul. In the meantime, please make yourselves at home. May I offer you any refreshment? I have some lovely _hors d’oeuvres_ available; marine, feline…”

Spike broke in before Buffy could curtail her amusement long enough to speak up without laughing. “Cut the crap, Teeth. Why did your flunky bring us out here? You want to do business, or is this a social call?” He glanced around derisively. “Because if you did, I can tell you right now my lady’s not all that impressed with your brand of hospitality.”

“That much is true. For one,” Buffy tilted her head to eye their fishy, anxious host, “I’d think by now you’d have picked up that the Slayer does not eat kittens.” 

“Oh. Yes. Of course.” Turning swiftly, Teeth waved one flippered hand toward the open doorway, and some demon with completely translucent skin—like, no joke, you could see its blood vessels pulsating underneath—popped its veiny head through the door. Um, ew. “Tronoch, could you please bring our guests some…” He shot Buffy another thoroughly anxious glance. “Smoked salmon?”

Okay, she could actually totally go for some smoked salmon. “It might make me feel mildly less irate,” she hazarded, and thought she heard a tiny snort of dry amusement from her lover. /What? I’m in a lot of pain here. That little meal would make me feel a hell of a lot happier about life!/

“Smoked salmon. Immediately!”

The veiny demon vanished from the doorway. Which was of the good, if Buffy was planning on eating, much less enjoying this smoked yumminess anytime soon. That practically sounded like fresh food, and oh wow, how long had it been since she had had anything that hadn’t been preserved within an inch of its life?

“And for my dear fellow Demon Lord? I have a wonderful selection of humans downstairs…”

Spike leaned forward sharply, cutting off that line of inquiry. “You really, really don’t want to brass me off right now, Teeth, with all this fancy show of crap hospitality. I’m right upset as it is, and you’re not about to buy me off, so shut it and tell me straight off why the hell we shouldn’t just kill you?”

He had the right mindset. Buffy knew it, smoked salmon or no. Especially considering that this asshole had been gathering up humans like all the others for God knew what purposes, she should be seething instead of looking forward to a tasty treat. Would honestly have been all along if the whole situation hadn’t hit her funnybone so hard; but the whole thing had just struck her as more hilariously ironic than anything. Best, though, she supposed, to make with the threatening and keep the idiot on his toes. “You’re lucky we only killed twenty or whatever of your bats. What the hell were they doing hunting so far outside of your territory, anyway? Because if they were coming into our patrol zone looking for humans to add to some collection of yours…”

She could swear the loan shark paled, if that kind of demon could be said to pale. “A complete misunderstanding, I assure you. Absolute mistake. No harm meant, no trespassing intended. They don’t like seafood, so I have a tough time feeding them here. They tend to run wild, head inland… They’re an avian species, so they’re not so great at maps…” He glanced sharply away to gesture at one of the hangers-on hovering in the doorway. It jerked like it'd been shocked and darted out of the room; maybe to collar the bat-things. “My deepest apologies, Slayer, ah, Mr. Spike. I never meant for my Champion and his… larva to, ah, infringe on your territory. We all know that you and your friend, ah, own Beverly Hills. An Old One, I’d heard.” His fishy eyes flicked to Buffy. “And of course I couldn’t know that you had the Slayer here as your Champion, of course. That is an entirely other affair. I am hands-off. Strictly hands-off. Obviously our territories don’t even touch, so I have no reason…”

“Shut it, Teeth. You and I both know you’re an opportunistic bottom-feeder with the mentality of a knee-breaker, so let’s cut to the chase, yeah? Why humans? You don’t eat them. You have no use for 'em, so what gives?”

Buffy could swear the guy was sweating now. Could shark-demons sweat? “Ah…” His eyes darted to Buffy. Back to Spike. And then, as if to break the tension the veiny demon came back at that exact moment and held out a rather large, flat, white box with a sort of totemic-looking drawing on top in black and green with hints of red; maybe a bird of some kind. “Here you go, Lord Bro’os.”

Sharky snatched the box like it was a lifeline and turned back to Buffy. Held it out immediately. “Oh. Thank you, Tronoch. Yes. Here; for you, Slayer. Several pounds of my finest smoked salmon. They had an entire store here from somewhere up in Washington; really fabulous stuff. My gift to you. I’d give you more, but I don’t really have all that much left…”

Buffy eyed the proffered offering, mouth watering. She could _smell_ the oily, smoked odors lingering on the air around him, and oh God, were her eyes going to roll back into her head.

She was actually kind of forgetting about her shoulder for a sec.

“Lord Bro’os, is it?” Spike asked dryly, watching her with understanding as she fought with herself over the ‘forgive and forget’ bribe. He would in no way judge her if she took it; no more than she had judged him for feeding. Vitamin deficiencies were a real thing in this hell.

But would she judge herself, was the question.

“I am so known here, yes, Mr. Spike.” The shark-lord seemed incredibly anxious to pay his debt to Buffy, get back into her good graces. “Please, Slayer. My gift to you. I’m terribly regretful of this misunderstanding. If we had any idea the Slayer was here, in LA when…” His tones tightened. “We all thought you were somewhere in Europe by now.”

Buffy jerked her eyes away from the tasty treat with an effort—how badly did she need omega oils, anyway?—and narrowed her gaze at him. “I had reason to come back. The timing was just right.”

“Oh?” The toothy creature chuckled uncomfortably; a low, insincere-sounding ‘heh heh heh’. “It’s just; you know. The famous Slayer. I mean, I know there are more now; out there, making our lives interesting. But you’re…” He waved his flipper, as if words were unnecessary.

“I know. The thing demons tell their kids about when they don’t eat their blood and larva.” She shrugged. “I’ll have to kill you if you make a big deal about it, though. Just so you know. I’m trying to keep a low profile here.”

‘Bro’os’ looked surprised at this. “But why, Slayer? If you’re working with Mr. Spike… Why, with your reputation, Beverly Hills just became utterly impregnable. An Old One, the rumors say, as co-ruler. The vampire who made a name slaughtering his own kind, and helped take down a hellgod. And now you, Slayer. Well, you’re famous, aren’t you? Everyone in the demon world knows you. Took out master vampires, and Angelus, and that Mayor who tried to Ascend; that Glorificus creature—I don’t even want to know how you all managed that, but I sure left town when that was going down—took on the First Evil and made the whole damn hellmouth into a crater…”

“Well, actually, that last part was Spike,” Buffy interrupted, now well-inured to the recital of exploits that had cost her so much personal pain. The scar on her hand burned, though; a low, dull ache that only eased when Spike touched it. Cooled.

The shark-demon’s eyes flickered over to stare at his fellow demon-lord, and he seemed to shrink back into himself as his tiny, dark eyes jerked back to Spike. “Didn’t know that. Listen. A hundred cats on me, alright? Just for your deference…” 

At Spike’s thunderous expression he quailed further, held up his hand-things in surrender. “All I’m saying is, if you’re famous, why not use it. No skin off mine; I’m way over here. No threat to you, but with Century City there tugging on your skirt, and Burbank getting stronger every day, and who knows what WeHo might get up to… And none of us want to even think about Burge hustling his way through Downtown like a house on fire. I’d use all the weight I could swing if I were you. If I had the Slayer’s notoriety on my side…”

“How’s that, you little pissant?” Spike demanded, sounding thrown. “Doubt half the beasties here even know what the Slayer is. It’s a different dimension, yeah?”

“Oh, a lot of the things that live here are native, sure,” Bro’os answered with a dismissive flipper-wave. “The flying ones, of course. The cephalopods; crawled right up out of the steamy ocean the second they had a chance and started sucking on souls the minute they noticed the change. I mean, don’t blame ‘em, do I? Why become bouillabaisse when you can stay cool and enjoy the breeze…”

/The ocean here is hot? God, is _everything_ hot, here?/

“Same with the deep-undergrounders. All the big hitters. But a ton of us little mid-level guys are from the old town. You know; stuck our heads out of the sewers when the change hit. Saw our chance to make a profit, change our fortunes…” He waved his appendages around in a ‘See what I mean?’ gesture. “Amazing what an enterprising demon can do in a few weeks in a place like this.”

Spike lost his patience. “The humans, Teeth. That’s what our Slayer here wants. Not your damn smoked fish. Why do you have _humans?”_

Okay, that was debatable. Could she make a trade for the people _and_ the salmon? “I’d really like to know, Teeth,” she told the jittery demon lord sweetly, but with that edge that said death was coming soon. Her shoulder seriously hurt. It was making her kind of edgy wondering if his stupid bats had given her a life-threatening infection. 

Shark-head shrank a little further. “It’s Bro’os now,” he reminded them with faint insistence.

They flat ignored him, and after a moment ‘Bro’os’ gave up once more on his faint grasp toward dignity and dithered right on. “You know I’m a businessman. I do what I have to to get by. This area? It only has so much territory before I just get ground into the sea, and that thing would cook me like a lobster.” A wince, maybe? Hard to tell with the wide, expressionless features. “I picked the place because I obviously like an ocean view, but I didn’t think about the cons.” Another gesture out toward the blood-colored wavelets. “Damn cephalopods coming in every night to cling to the towers like limpets, trying to suck the souls out of my captives. Fending off Compton every time he tries to expand north. Westwood trying to take me over every second. Had to find some kind of negotiating tactic. A trade tool; especially when it came to Kr’ph. And since he liked his arena sports and his concubines…”

A shudder of disgust ran through Buffy’s frame. Her very soul. “You keep them to trade with the other demon lords. To buy yourself off.”

“Look,” the shark-bastard told her, practically mired in his cowardice. “I bit off more than I can chew here, okay? I admit it. But if I don’t keep up appearances, I go down. So, hey?” Setting aside his encumbering box of salmon on a little table, he spread his flippered hands in a greasy gesture; in the process wafting a fishy aroma toward them that smelled much less appealing than that of the comestibles. “How about we strike up a deal, you and me? Now Westwood’s gone and Beverly Hills is the big hitter, how about I scratch your back, you scratch mine, huh?” His eyes jerked from Buffy’s to Spike’s and back again, wide as they could go and anxious to make a trade. “You need donors, Mr. Spike? Supply the habit here? I got your people. Big bats to pick them off from the air. Bring them right to you; can range all the way from Compton to Central LA. Find you whatever you want.” Back to Buffy. “Save you the effort. I can even deliver them; no charge, right to your door. My gift to you; demon-lord to Slayer, in honor of a long and productive non-relationship back in Sunnydale, and may we never directly cross paths again…”

Spike looked down his nose at the shark. Exchanged glances with Buffy. “And what do you want for all of this effort, Teeth?” he asked suspiciously.

“I’m not killing anyone for you,” Buffy informed him flatly. “That’s not in the fee scale.” Though, she had to admit, having a bunch of bat-demons scour the land for human flotsam and hand-deliver them would definitely relieve her mind when it came to the whole, ‘How many are we missing’ tattoo always beating away at the back of her mind.

She might even get some sleep at ‘night’, with this deal.

“Oh, of course not, I’d never presume…” The flippers came together in an attitude almost like prayer, or a thoughtful _namaste_. Bro’os appeared unnerved at the mere suggestion. “I’d prefer to think of us as… realms with an understated cooperative mood. And should the demon lords ever become… negatively aligned…”

Spike’s mouth twisted. “You’d want us to back you.”

“Well. As I said. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I’m in a precarious position here. I could use some strength, and you have that in spades. I have…” He waved his hand-things again, expansively. “A showy property. An excellent view. And shrinking assets, since you’ve so readily dispatched my growing brood of aerial warfare experts.” His regret over that fiasco was clear.

“Wouldn’t sodding cry about it,” Spike pointed out, “since you had them where they oughtn’t to have been.” He shot Buffy a glance. “What do you think, luv?”

“I think we need a moment’s consultation,” she informed Shark-head flatly, “considering you’re asking us to make a decision without one of our people even on-site to agree.”

Spike grunted at this reminder, and from the wry look on his face Buffy thought he was thinking it didn’t matter half the time anyway, depending on whether Illyria was even Illyria.

“Oh, of course, of course; please take your time. Would… the other of your number be… the rumored Old One?”

“Got it in one, Teeth.” 

Their host looked like he’d been kicked in said dentition. “I thought that was just an exaggeration,” he muttered, and stepped back, head down and clearly overwhelmed. 

They moved away to discuss the matter. Spike had his hand on Buffy’s shoulder the moment they did so, attempting to staunch the still-slowly-flowing ooze without hurting her. “It’s not got anything vital,” he murmured to her. “Don’t much like how long it’s going on, though.”

She did her best not to hiss at the pressure. “Maybe I can find something to bandage it before we leave.” She cut her eyes to his. “Does it smell clean, though? I don’t like how those things stank. I have a feeling those claws are a one-way trip to infection, and Slayer-strength or no, in a place like this…”

She could see him steel himself to keep the interaction clinical as he moved forward. Pulled her close, lowered his head to her oozing shoulder. And closed his eyes. Inhaled deeply, mouth a tiny bit open to use the entirety of his olfactory system. And he shook his head a little, uncertain. Dipped his tongue out to take the smallest taste. She did her best not to shudder with him; to keep it impersonal as, even with the accompanying pain, the sensation brought about echoes of the flesh in the lizard brain. Because this? Was so not the venue.

“Yeah,” he told her finally, and let his inhalation escape on a long, shuddering breath. “You bled out clean.” With exquisite care, he closed the punctures with the lightest possible brushes of his tongue; three in the front. One in the back. Probably could have completely cleaned her up, but maybe the blood all over her was tainted with icky bat-claw. Or maybe it would just be a little much for him to cope with right now, and they’d end up against a wall somewhere. 

Consequently, she did her best to ignore his erection, pressing lightly against her navel. /Not the time, not the place./ “So… um… What do you think about his…” Cleared her throat. “Proposition?”

His fingers flexed. Tightened briefly on her waist as he fought with himself… and then put her away from him with a firmness of discipline that came, she knew, from years of smelling blood on her and, starved and in love, doing exactly jack shit about it. “Probably expedient right now,” he answered, a little hoarsely. “Would save us the hell of a lot of effort, yeah?” His eyes opened, blazing blue on hers in the russet light like a summer sky flecked with the amber light of the sun, and dark at the center like shade under a tree for they two alone. “And maybe you’d get some sleep at night.”

She found herself mesmerized by the singing of the bond between them. “You weren’t supposed to know about that.”

“Know you, Slayer.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, looking away. “You do.” She shrugged and dropped her hand from his arm, feeling mildly defeated. “The future implications of the deal are kind of vague, though. It might cause you and Illyria a lot of problems when the chips are down.”

“So, we worry about that then?” he asked, sounding lighthearted, and shot her that tiny grin that belonged only to her.

“You’re so not a planner.”

“Never was, pet.”

She tried her own smirk. “Xander would call you chaotic neutral.” Her friend had once attempted to classify all of them by that mystifying gamer horoscope. Most of it had fallen out of Buffy's head, but for some reason that part--Xander's musings on Spike's journey from 'chaotic evil' to 'chaotic neutral'--had stuck in her head.   
  
/No idea why./ 

Spike snorted. “It’s a wonder the boy ever got himself shagged, that one. And any road, I'm not neutral anymore. You saw to that.”

/Aw./ That was probably the closest he would ever get to admitting he'd tossed in his baddie card forever. “Yeah, well, it’s amazing what you demons will do when you’re in love.”

“True, that.”

They turned back, decided. And took the deal.

And the current crop of humans. 

And the smoked salmon, because let’s not be stupid. 

Besides. Bro’os owed her for the bat-gouges on her shoulder, right?

***  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Anyhoo. Ending on some politics, because the ongoing weaving in of comics politics has been fascinating (for me, anyway). Wanted to get some of the beginnings of "Champion-Buffy" in there, as a political reality.  
  
The comics having brought ol' Teeth back into the mix was hilarious to me. I just HAD to play more with him, esp. with Spuffy in the mix.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, y'all. I completely lost track of my days, here. I didn't even remember that I was having a weekend a couple of days ago. Stupid holidays, messing with my ability to track what day of the week it is. My bad.
> 
> Here we have the aftereffects of Buffy's conscience as she takes on responsibility once more in Hell. Being a Champion in such a place, officially taking herself 'off the vacay list' has its pros and cons, unfortunately. But we're winding down out of Month 2, and this is the second to last post before we get into Month 3 where stuff really starts kicking off, so it's time to let the honeymoon start trickling away, sadly.
> 
> Off we go, then.

“No apologies are necessary. It is useful that we make alliances with other demon lords, and broker access to their assets.” Little Shiva, as always, never broke a sweat from where she sat on her throne across from his discussing the unexpected results of their little foray into Santa Monica. “It is an added benefit that you have foreshortened the time you will be spending beyond our borders, hunting for human stragglers to retrieve for our friends to secure in their hideaways. An altogether beneficial negotiation.”

She meant that she hoped that he would be spending less time out and about with Buffy and more here with her doing his bit with the administration gig. Well. He’d have to break it to her that that was hardly likely, but maybe he’d save that conversation for another meeting. “Glad you approve, since it’s doubtful we could change things up now, considering we’ve taken charge of a whole load of his chattel and brought them here. Buffy’s got them downstairs now. In pretty decent shape, too. Give credit where it’s due; Teeth was a bit gentler a master to humans than Kr’ph was.” Though that was possibly due more to the fact that shark-head back there had no interest in eating the poor buggers than anything else. 

Had they been kittens, they’d all be sodding goners.

As to survivors in relatively worse shape, Spike and the Slayer had done a circuit on the way back in hopes of picking up the trail of those poor pulsers they’d been forced to leave behind when the carrion bats had picked them up, but no such luck. Probably they’d died of their wounds or been reclaimed by some other demonic enterprise, the way they’d been bleeding out, and good luck to them. 

Buffy was a right mess about it, of course, though she was being strong about it. Hadn’t said a word one, though he had seen her winching up tighter and tighter over it as the miles had gone by. She was a silent, miserable shell by now, a few hours back from their bitch of a twelve-mile journey encumbered by the twenty-odd bits of human wreckage they’d brought back with them. Though, granted this lot had at least been better fed and less footsore than the last dozen-plus they’d had to herd across half the city, and they’d made significantly better time as a result. Still, it had been the hell of a ticklish, roundabout trek with just the two of them on watch, walking wounded, and the both of them on the lookout the entire time for any spoor of their three lost waifs. Or at least once they’d gotten back to Beverlywood, any road,

Not a sign one, though, and he had better cut this meeting short and get back downstairs. See to his mate before she cracked. If he knew Buffy—and he knew Buffy—she would be strong till it killed her. She needed somewhere safe to fall apart, and better if it happened out of sight so she could do it all at once and get it over. Otherwise she’d be doing it in bits, over the span of weeks. It’d be coming out in little jagged time-bombs and getting all over the both of them in painful spurts, and he’d honestly just rather avoid that sort of shrapnel by seeing to her all in one quick, loud, sonic boom.

She’d be angrier at herself than anyone else, and much the worse for it now, having taken on this Champion business. An official role again, as if that made it commandment, carved in stone, that she ought never fail anyone or leave a civilian behind. /I love you like life, pet, but hell if you aren't sold on this martyr business./ She could give sodding Angel a run for his money on that bit. 

She was all tangled up inside her own head right now, searching for some other way out; something else she could have done differently to fix it. Always blamed herself too much for the casualties, his woman. Never left room for life, and the way it was just sometimes one hell of a queen bitch. She needed someone like him, who’d seen a whole bloody lot more of it, to remind her sometimes that life was a right harridan at times, and at best you ought just rage against the dying of the light and all that rot, maybe punch and kick a bit, then settle down with a handle of rotgut and either cry it out or shag it out and get on with the business of it… because whether you wanted it to or not, tomorrow would surely come with a new and assorted set of sodding fuckeries to do you in.

/Thing is to learn to like the fuckery, yeah? Get a bit twisted, since the world isn’t about to straighten out for you./ He thought his girl was figuring that out by now. And part of him hated that she’d had to, and rough up that golden brightness she had with the tarnish of reality. 

But she could see him now, and know he was real. And maybe even… that he was of use to her, in the long run, though he still had his reservations as to whether he was actually _good_ for her. He was aware at least that it wasn’t him being about, per se, that was tarnishing her, and knew she was aware finally that she knew it too. Knew that he only wanted to help. Help her get by when the inevitable pain set in. Hold her through the hard knocks, and maybe shine her up a bit to face the next morning.

As soon as was acceptable he bade farewell to his co-ruler, made his way to the lobby. She was gone by then, though, their bitty herd of refugees seen to, so he made his way upstairs to the suite he shared with Buffy. Christ, he still couldn’t bloody believe that sometimes, that he shared rooms with his golden goddess. It still felt like a sodding dream. 

He was arrested in the corridor at the sight of Maria, standing there in the doorway, speaking to his mate, _cordially_ even, her arms held out. Which was odd enough without the little detail that, draped across them were a number of a long, sparkly sorts of evening gowns in varying colors.

/What the actual fuck?/ 

“…Saved a lot of them, before everyone called quarters. I just couldn’t stand the thought that they’d all get, you know, claimed by people who couldn’t appreciate the history…”

“No, that’s amazing, I can’t believe you did that! I’ve been so devastated, thinking of dresses worn by Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe being shredded by someone with no concept of what they mean; or being worn to some crazed demon party…”

“I know, right? That’s why I hid them. I mean…” And Maria actually blushed. “I’m not going to lie. I tried on one or two of them. But I made sure I didn’t even sweat. And I left the backs unlaced. Just looked in the mirror, and…”

“I’m going to be real, Maria. I would’ve done the same. I’d totally try one on right now if I didn’t think I’d bleed on them. Talk about a dream come true…” Sodding hell, Buffy was gushing. Gushing with the woman who had been her bleeding mortal enemy just days before, as they got all girly over a lot of diamond-studded cloth. 

Christ, this dimension was a fucking trip. “Nice to see you two girls getting along,” he informed them, leaning a bit against the wall.

His dry tones interrupted the little mind-meld, and Maria jumped. Not half so high as Buffy did, and she became promptly visible from just inside the doorway, staring at him with two bright spots of high old color in her cheeks. “Spike! We were just looking over this pile of incredibly gorgeous dresses Maria rescued from…”

“The hotel museum. Yeah. I overheard.” He crossed his ankles and struck up a fag, feeling a bit out of his element. “Hollywood history buff, is it?” he asked his retainer blandly, and shot Buffy a smug look. He knew which answer applied there.

Maria’s guilty expression fled. “Oh my God, yes. You never saw this place before Non really settled in and we ransacked it. This gold lamé gown, for one thing; do you have any idea who wore…”

“Carole Lombard,” Buffy supplied promptly. “My mother had a picture of her in it on her nightstand when I was little. She used to tell me, ‘Buffy, this is how you dress to kill’.”

“Met her once,” Spike informed them, and casually tamped out his half-smoked fag on the bottom of his boot, as it wouldn’t do to waste them now there wasn’t any more importing going on in the city. No use being profligate in this place. “She was a sweet piece.” He straightened and met Buffy’s awed eyes with a penetrating glance. “Never could figure out how she put up with an asshat like Gable, but I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.” 

Buffy’s eyes flared up in sudden fascination… which was what he had hoped for. Why sit and gabble over dresses when you could talk to the source, yeah? “Something people have said to me quite a few times,” she answered him with a teasing smile, “but maybe he had something. Like you?”

He felt the slow, answering grin touch his lips. “Touché. Was about to make a comment about tall, dark, and that rot, but if you’re gonna go that way, I’ll bite.”

Her smile widened with delight. “Promise?”

Maria blushed harder. “I should go.”

“Wait.” Buffy reached out. Lightly touched one of the short stack of dresses in the brunette bird’s now-retracted grasp. “Thank you for showing me. I’m so glad you saved them. It’s been weighing on my mind.” Something seemed to catch in her throat, but she pushed forward. “You have… good taste.” It must have been tough for her to do it; make the attempt, but she had done, and Spike was bloody well proud of her. 

“So do you,” Maria half-whispered, and with a quick, shy glance under her lashes in Spike’s general direction, fled back toward the stairs.

They watched her go for a mo’, then Spike unwound himself from his lazy lean against the wall to saunter toward the door. “Making nice with the staff now, is it?”

“Yeah, well; you know.” Piercing viridian eyes hove onto his, drawing him closer; spring-green flecked with midday summer gold. Like a bleedin’ poem from his youth. Every poem he had ever read or written. Like lying under the leaves of a linden tree and watching the clouds float by, warmed by the day, and remembering being alive. “So. You meet a lot of celebrities over the years?”

He shook off the nancy foolishness of his fancy. “A few.” Pulled out his pack, slipped the half-smoked fag back in for safekeeping, tucked them away again. “Some you might not know, they being before your time and all.”

She lifted an interested brow. “Eat anyone famous?”

He smirked broadly at her. “That would be tellin’.”

“So tell me.”

He followed her into the suite.

***

Unfortunately, talk of the celebrities he had met over the decades—and certainly not eaten, because he had some bloody restraint—only lasted so long before her guilt washed back through. So much for that boon of a distraction from Maria’s unexpected quarter. 

“You need to stop goin’ over it,” he informed her roughly. Not a command, certainly, because that would just put her back up. Best to go gently with Buffy; and he had been, for a good hour as he rubbed his hands briskly over her upper arms and sighed. He was well-prepared to repeat the mantra to her for, what? The fourth time? The fifth? “Get some sleep, lamb. You badly need it.”

Her head lifted from his chest, diverted briefly. “Funny thing to call me, considering I’m such a rotten sheepdog. Maybe if I was still more one of the sheep…” Her expression was damn devastated.

“Oh, bleeding Christ.” Shifting with a growl, he sat up higher against the headboard and pulled her firmly against him. “Just think about something else, luv. Anything else, yeah? Uh…” He cast about wildly, wondering what the fuck subject to get her on that might work. Her comment about her possible muddled origins, though, led him on a bit of a leapfrog from thence to the proliferation of new Slayers, and that got him on to a nice tangent that might be of use. “Now you’re not the bloody ‘Chosen One’ and all that rot anymore, you think you’ll ever toddle off back to uni again, if we ever get out of here?” Her startled look made him curse himself briefly, wondering what the hell had made him land on schoolwork, of all things. But damn it, he hadn’t been able to think of anything better. “You seemed to be having a right nice time for a bit there, from what I saw at least, before…” He trailed off, remembering belatedly just what exactly had occurred to make her quit university. /Distraction, damn you, not devastation!/ “Did you have any favorite lessons, or…” 

Blessedly, she rolled with it. “I had a few. I might… maybe consider it. It would at least give me some kind of a clock again, if I can actually settle down and let myself use it.”

/What, now?/

“I mean, it’s not the same as slaying, and I’ve learned I’ll never be normal no matter how many Chosen girls there are out there, so there’s no use trying, but…” Her eyes shot to meet his, verdant and troubled. “I could have been a really good student, you know? I mean…” Dropped to the bedclothes, where she abruptly began picking at precisely nothing on the sheets. “I got really great SAT scores. Could have gone anywhere, really. Northwestern accepted me, and I’d also applied to a few other ones that I thought were long shots, but if…” She shook her head grimly. “But then Faith, and just, _always_…”

She didn’t have to finish for him to understand. “Yeah, hear you loud and clear, luv.” /There was always the slaying. The Calling. The sodding hellmouth./ Christ, what a fix she’d been in. His poor, bright, brilliant girl; stuck pretending to be less than she was for so long even she believed it. Stripped into underachieving all the time just to fit into a role that had been forced on her by destiny; or because she simply had not had time to excel at any bloody thing else. 

Not that she didn’t fucking excel at the slaying. No other bird did it better. But it clearly weighed on her. The wondering. What else she might have been able to do in her life besides kill beasties that went bump in the night, and sling burgers at a rathole like that Doublemeat shitbarn.

“I don’t know,” she was saying, still mostly to the sheets. “Maybe I was just better at taking tests than I was at doing actual work. A lot of people are. God knows I never did very good at sitting down with Giles to worship books about demons, either. But for a few minutes there in college, once I got it all figured out and kind of got my feet under me…” She lifted her eyes to his, and they flickered with something. Less self-doubt than he had seen in a long time, and more… yearning. “I _enjoyed_ it. The learning. I actually _enjoyed_ being the one to _know_ things.” She cut her eyes away, but he caught it despite. The fact that they were suspiciously wet, and oh, bloody... “I even beat Willow at an essay thing, once.”

It echoed in him; in the long-lost scholar that was William Pratt; a man who had buried himself in knowledge for the sheer joy of it, until… /Oh, pet. Oh, Buffy… And then it was all torn away from you. Oh, Christ, Love…/

She had been good at something she had actually _earned_, with her own hard labor. Not something that had been given her by mystical means, because some ancient Watcher-types had tied down a captive girl millennia ago and forced her to swallow the essence of a vamp’s demon so that she had been driven, whether she wanted it or no, to fight and to seek out sex and violence and the wild because she had been pre-loaded with piss and vinegar and springs and all the adrenaline the Slayer line could buy. 

This… had been _hers_. Discovered late, claimed; something with which she had come into her own. She hadn’t gotten to know it beforehand, because the damned Calling always took the chits before they were even old enough to find and know themselves as people, separate from the thing; from being made tools. But against all odds she had survived long enough to mature a bit, and find that she was good at something other than fighting. Something human and powerful in its own right; something she could own. It had clearly given her pride, a new and growing, separate sense of identity. 

But before she had even been able to settle in and enjoy it, it had been snatched away, and the thing that had been forced on her had, as always, taken precedence once more. Taken it all away from her before she could even taste the power of it. 

The words were wrenched from him before he could even consider how the hell he could fulfill the cost. “We’ll figure it out, luv. Figure out a way for you to have it again, yeah? Somehow, someday.”

She did not bother even a little to question his dedication, or the means. And she still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “But what if… Every time I do that, every time I turn my attention to something that… selfish…” Her eyes lifted to meet his. “Someone _dies_, Spike. Because _I _could have saved them. If I wasn’t distracted…” And her body trembled under his touch.

/Like us. Like _this_, you’re sayin’? You sayin’ every time we lie together, here, and every time we did before, you felt like you were cursing yourself, because you were taking time off from the fight?/ He had thought he was screwed up, but his Slayer took the bleeding cake. “Soddin’ hell, Buffy; you’re not a damn machine; and even the bleedin’ bot got plugged in to recharge every night. God knows you’re owed a little peace and quiet between battles; and if that means someone slips through the cracks while you’re gettin’ your head on straight, feedin’ your soul—with schooling or with anything else that helps—or getting’ your body seen to—and Christ knows I’m lucky to be the bloke as gets to do that for you!—then I don’t think anyone would begrudge you that, from the bleedin’ Powers That Be down to the lowliest twat you’ve ever saved. And if they ever did, to _hell_ with them, because you’ve earned every creature-comfort you can scratch together, yeah?” He was starting to get downright flustered, thinking of her putting herself to such screws for so many years. _“Especially_ now, when it isn’t all on _you_ anymore! You can lay down the bleedin’ _load,_ some!” 

He sat up sharp, caught her up to stare into her eyes some more. She looked a little uncertain at his bit of proclamation, then sighed and laughed a little shakily. “It’s probably too late anyway. I doubt I even remember how to student.” She waved a hand in his general direction; a vague indicator of their cuddly state of affairs. “We were lucky I even figured out how to do this without messing it up completely again…”

“You listen to me, you infuriating bint,” he half-growled, and now he was bolt-upright against the headboard. “You’re, what? Twenty…” He stumbled, counting in his head. How the hell old was she, anyway? Sometimes she seemed like a thousand, with all the shit she’d been through, sometimes still goddamned sixteen, emotionally, and stunted as hell. Not that that wasn’t to be expected, and who was he to talk, but…

“Twenty-three,” she murmured, watching him a little warily.

“Alright, then,” he told her briskly, still mildly infuriated, though the reminder of her relative age had calmed his ire considerably. Christ, he’d been getting on for twenty-seven when he’d been turned, and had finished his schooling, thought himself a right adult and that. Despite all that he’d still been a fair twat with the life experience of a toddler in comparison to her, so how could he expect her to have her life all sorted already when she hadn’t even surpassed a quarter-century? She hadn’t even had a mo’ to sit still and breathe for the last ten years, much less think about her state of affairs! “Listen, you. You’re in no bleeding way too old to go back, first thing. I was still in university till long past your age, yeah? Poking about bleeding books like a numpty, never a care that there was a world outside of ‘em; for a good three more years beyond where you’re at. Plenty of sodding time to get a degree in, if you want it; or just to have the experience of it, if that’s what you’re in it for…”

“You have a college degree?” Buffy demanded, sounding startled.

Arrested by her inquiry, he sat back a bit, felt the old uncertainty set in. But, well… /Hell. If it helps her. And it’s just us here. And, fuckit./ It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen him beyond vulnerable by this point. If she’d wanted to crush his soul, his heart, his being again, she could have done it long since. Had done, any number of times, without knowing who he’d been before, and he’d survived, so to hell with it, right? “Uh, yeah. I was an Oxford man, though I’ll never let Wes and your tweedy berk of a Watcher know we have that in common.” He smirked a little. “Like to mess with ‘em both a fair bit about it. Throws ‘em off. Though give credit where it’s due, both Rupert and Wes seem to have got their togs on straight as well, since they got out of the castle.”

“Throws them off?” He noticed she was holding herself very still, and prayed it wasn’t because she was judging him or summat.

Shrugging, he shot for nonchalant. “Got a reputation to keep up, Buffy. World thinks I’m a born street tough, yeah? Any of ‘em from your soddin’ Council of Wankers ever found out who I really was before, I’d be gutted. Wouldn’t really go with the role, would it? Big bad poet from St. John’s College?”

“Oh.”

“Though I’m startin’ to think they might suspect a bit. Giles does, I know. Better if he at least thinks I went to Cambridge. Would give him reason to disdain me.”

Buffy frowned at his side-diatribe. “Uh, okay, sure.”

Right. Put aside the British inter-university politics. His bird didn’t give a damn. “Never mind, pet.”

Her hand rose to brush over his heart, settled there, clinging to his t-shirt. “What was your degree in?” she asked quietly, sounding utterly mystified at the concept of him holding a bloody diploma.

It was kind of nettling, actually. “What do you think, Buffy?” He jerked his chin back over his right shoulder, toward the small makeshift bookshelf, by now crammed cheek-by-jowl with paperbacks and even the occasional hardcover he’d managed to scrounge in this bizarre dimension. “Poetry, Literature; the magic of verse and all that rot. Right useful, obviously; but well enough to be getting on with, and all very proper for a gentleman of leisure in my day.” He smiled slightly, in spite of himself, and let the old words roll from his tongue. _ “Literae Humaniores_; Classics, Humanities and the lot. Will say, the mythology bit’s helpful now, doin’ what we do; and the Greek and Latin.”

“Yeah. For sure.” She didn’t seem to find it nearly as worthy of mockery as he himself did. To his everlasting startlement, she didn’t say word one about the ‘gentleman of leisure’ slip, expression thoughtful. “Wow,” she murmured, eyes drifting across the spines of his tiny library. “You sure hid it well. I just thought you really liked to read in your spare time.” And then a faintly confused expression drifted across her adorable face. “Though I’m never really sure when that is anymore…”

He scoffed at that, made an internal promise to sit her down and force her to listen to him read to her, one of these long days in hell. “Well, we also didn’t have telly for a bloody lot of my existence. Nor yet radio shows.” 

That earned him a small smile. “Of course not, granddad…”

“Oi. Shut it, you…” He resettled himself back against the headboard. “All I’m sayin’ is… you’ll have the time, now, and…” Lifted one tentative hand to stroke at her hair. Felt her settle into it and relaxed in himself, glad of the opportunity to afford her some small measure of peace. Christ, it was good that she let herself lie in his arms of late. Time was, she wouldn’t even after the shagging; but now… “No doubt you could’ve done it sooner and, maybe, done better justice even to the Slayer bits of the studying… but you were probably bloody tired of hearing about the latter, and…” 

His fingers slid along behind her ear, caressing her vagus nerve as she tensed. “For all the rest… You were a bit busy, pet, what with the late-night strolls through the graveyards dusting iggerant fledges, and protecting the cub scouts, and worrying about saving the world on the regular.” Slid his fingers down the underside of glorious golden mane, grown out long again in the months since the collapse of the hellmouth. A trial, no doubt, in the fighting, but so bleeding lovely that he must card it, again and again, and sift prodding fingertips into her nape in a gentle massage, and watch her eyes close from the tugging pleasure of it. /Still a miracle, to touch you like this, and have you lean into me./ “Had a bit more on your shoulders,” he murmured, and laid the hand very gently over the burning heat of her swiftly-healing wounds there, “than your average student, I reckon.”

She pondered that for a bit, then shrugged. “Yeah. I guess. Probably why Giles always gave in in the end and let me lean on him when it came to the demonology. And I let him. Let _them_, because I felt like…” She made a twisted bit of a face. “You know. I had a _team_ for that. And I guess if I was like other Slayers and wasn’t trying to have a life outside of slaying, maybe… She shivered a little in his arms, against the coolth of his hand against her fevered shoulder. “I just can’t help thinking sometimes that maybe if I’d been better at it, studied more, done more, then maybe I could have been better at it. Saved more lives.” And, like water flowing to the bottom of a culvert, she drifted right bloody back to the subject he’d been trying to avoid. “Like those people…”

That was it. He was well enough done with it. Grabbed her by both biceps, pulled her to face him. “Dammit, Buffy, you have to _stop_ this. You have to do what you must to stop _seeing_ them.” Her eyes jerked to his, haunted, and he cast about, rough in his frustration. “C’mon, now. Stick with me. Stay away from it, ‘cause you bloody well can’t help them turnin’ it over and over in your head, yeah? Think about something else.” Her eyes started to drift away from his, and he gave her a little shake to bring her back, feeling desperate. “Tell me. What was your most irritating lesson in school? Dullest thing you ever had to learn…”

Surprised at his bizarre tactic, she brought her gaze back, a faint smile crossing her lips. “You’re asking me about something _boring?_”

/Alright, I might still be a numpty, but I’m at a loss, here./ “Thought I might get a bit of a rant out of you,” he tried, hopeful. 

Her expression took on a cast that told him she was now positively humoring him. Which would be less than flattering, if he wasn’t relieved to hear her playing along. “Math, I guess. Not nearly as interesting as Psychology.” She sat up a bit, crossed her legs fetchingly. “I actually did good in that class for a while. Not sure if it was ‘cause I had a good teacher, or because I’m actually good at psychology, but, you know…” She lifted the uninjured shoulder and dropped it a little, a faint twist to her lips. “My grades did tank a little after she tried to kill me, so maybe it was the quality of the lectures…”

He started, nonplussed. “What, was the professor a demon or summat?” he demanded, and then held up a hand, shaking his head. “You know what, you probably don’t even have to answer that, knowing you. Sodding God, Buffy; only you could find a class at uni where the professor was some kind of lecturing litch, or…”

Her eyes sparkled at him, an odd light kindling there. “Well, she wasn’t that… but she did have a lot to say about vampires.”

That stilled him for a half-beat. “Yeah?”

Her smile widened, and they had a winner. She was well and truly diverted now. Glory be. “Yeah. Figuratively and literally.” Her gaze seemed to turn inward briefly, and she frowned a little. “Though I guess I didn’t really realize that she could’ve been talking about vamps at the time.”

He honestly wasn’t following her one whit. “You wanna come round to the part where you start makin’ sense, pet?”

“You know,” she answered, and absently rubbed the back of her head. “All this stuff about souls, and demons, and the mix in between?”

“Yeah?” he prodded, still mystified. 

“It just reminds me of Professor Walsh’s whole lecture about how we all manage to find our own way between the id and the ego…”

Spike jerked away to stare at her, mouth agape. “You trying to tell me that bleeding bitch was actually your Psychology professor?”

Buffy just eyed him idly, not at all taken aback by the sudden flurry. “Yeah. I’m still not sure how you missed that. I just now figured out that you didn’t know. I mean… you were around.”

He subsided back to the headboard, utterly floored. “Heard you all calling her ‘Professor’ and that, knew she worked at the uni, but I didn’t know you were in classes with the slapper, did I? Thought it was a title from her Initiative connections, as that’s how I knew the bitch.” He could feel himself going taut; the remembered tension of the trammeled animal. “Honest to Christ, Buffy, did you actually take lessons from that cold…”

“Remember that she’s already dead,” she reminded him softly.

“Lucky for her.” He was embarrassed to note that his hands were trembling a little on the bedclothes. But then, considering what they had almost done to him in that bright-lit, antiseptic hell… And what they _did_ do. The agony of it, and the helplessness that never ended…

“You okay?”

He let out a breath. “Yeah. Just a bit of vivid recall. Try not to remember my little trip to the vet if I can help it. Wankers thought of us as animals, but even animals get anesthesia when you cut into their brains, yeah? Takes a special kind of hate to do it to us like they did, whatever they told themselves.”

Buffy was up out of bed like a shot. “They didn’t use anesthesia?” She was gaping at him.

Christ, she didn’t know? “Why the bloody hell would they, Buffy? No more’n those butchers at Auschwitz used it when they did their Mengele shite, or the bastards using slave women as experiments in the South did when they were sewin’ up fistulas without ether. Once someone decides you aren’t a person, you don’t count, innit?” He managed a bit of a head-shake in negation. “Though really it’s more they _want_ you to be in pain. Makes ‘em feel superior about their pathetic lives.”

“Oh my God…”

She was so upset he could feel it shaking in her blood; a horrified roaring tuning up to a new and frothing, sickened rage. Well. At least he wasn’t alone anymore. “Remember they’re dead, pet,” he reminded her grimly. Turning her own words back on her was enough to get him somewhat back on an even keel. The irony of it; and hm. He could see why she found it a bit of a triumph of late to do that to him so often. 

Buffy swallowed and looked away. “I can’t believe I let it go on as long as I did. That I explained it away to myself as…” She shook her head. “That I ever thought we were remotely on the same side. Killing something clean if it comes at you is one thing, but _that_…”

He shrugged, looked away. “They did a number on your head, I reckon. Nazis are good at propaganda. Seen it before.”

He saw it. The shock, then the brief parade of thoughts crossing her face. A reorganization of concepts. /Yes, pet. Nazis. Been there twice. Know the ropes./ 

After a long moment she slowly came back down to her former reclining position. Sighed and leaned her head back against the headboard. She didn’t touch him, but she did lay one hand very close to his thigh; a quiet gesture of peace… and of regret. “If it helps at all, I had no idea who she was or what she was up to—her or Riley—till long after…”

He could let it go. Now. “It does. Not that it matters anymore; or that it would’ve mattered much then.” Which they both knew was the truth, since prior to his having had the chip she had basically considered him a rabid animal to be put down if he showed the least tendency to run to harm. 

Not that he could blame her. He’d kidnapped Red and the boy and threatened to do them dirty, snuck about in her home behind her back, wreaked who knew how much mayhem on her turf… And God knew he had announced his every intention to rip off her head off and drink from her brain stem, back then. Just for some reason, he had never quite been able to manage it, never quite been able to bring himself to do it. 

Sodding gorgeous, unattainable Slayers and their sodding charms. She’d ruined a perfectly good Master vampire, long before they’d ever given Spike his little operation. He supposed he couldn’t hold too much against the bleeding Initiative, since really all they’d managed to do was put him up close and personal with the Slayer and her lot… and in the end, forced him to come face to face with the truth.

His hand rose of its own accord to slide up under her hair, cup her cheek. /And recognize my destiny. Blood and dust and all./

As his hand dropped away, her voice started again. “The really stupid thing is, before she turned into Initiative-Leader-Chick for me, she really was an amazing professor. Isn’t that awful? I learned a lot in that class.”

Spike grunted. “S’pose everyone has their good points. Even psychotic bitches with Oberhauser delusions.” 

Buffy blinked, but didn’t ask him about the reference. “I think a lot lately about some of the stuff I learned while I was in school. I think I didn’t really get to process a lot of it then…”

“Understandable. You had a mite going on.”

She smiled slightly, as if amused that he would always offer her such latitude. “Kind of dumb that I’m just now starting to get about why I’ve had such a hard time with you, and with giving up on the Angel thing… and about myself. How I work, when I really had all the info at my fingertips all this time, and I just… couldn’t put it all together before.”

He didn’t honestly think it was all that surprising. He was, however, fascinated to hear any epiphanies his girl might have to share. Despite the subject matter, then, he forced himself to relax, intrigued enough to be going on with. “Do tell, pet.”

She shrugged a little as she rattled on, not quite looking at him. “Well, she went on and on in the Freud part of the class about how his model was outdated, but how some parts of it kind of still applied… and maybe it is outdated for humans. But maybe it isn’t for vampires?” She shot him a quick glance. “I mean, you’re kind of a multi-part creature, right? Isn’t the demon kind of like the id? It comes along and kicks out the superego; or at least ties it up and hides it in the back, depending on who you talk to…”

Spike grunted, a bit startled at this observation. 

Buffy was apparently encouraged by his response. “And the ego is kind of like the part that develops over the years as the fledge-y id gets used to working with what’s left of the superego’s… I dunno. Influence, and develops this sort of mature halfway point.” She thought about it for a moment, finger tracing circles on the sheet over his leg. It was ticklish, but he never twitched, fascinated by her musings; not to mention grateful, as always of late, that they could touch like this now without the excuse of sex. He’d sit still in the face of an avalanche for moments like these. “I think Angel never developed an ego till his curse,” she went on, mildly spoiling the moment, “because his id and his superego never talked. But you…” She turned a smile on him; one of those rare ones that were becoming more and more perversely common the longer they spent together in hell… and made it all better. “I think you always had that communication, right? On some level?”

He frowned at that, pondering it. It was rather difficult to parse the experience. She really was very taken with this theory of vampires as having never lost their souls entirely. With the idea that he’d carried wee Willie along for the ride during his entire existence; through every wild high and every sordid low, so that when he went to Lloyd over there in Uganda, all he’d really done was un-clip the choke-chain on the lad and set him back in front of his resident demon. 

It held water, he supposed. The demon he bore had always been a lover of chaos and excitement, but he had never been all that desperate to cause pain, per se, the way Angelus’ had. So he thought could accept that if his soul had in fact remained locked up somewhere in the back of his being, silent and entrammeled by the presence of such a minor fiend, it would still have seemed terrifying enough to stymie the quailing William for a good long while… but certainly not enough of a demon to cut the lad out entirely and murder all traces of him the way Angelus had Liam. He would see no reason to kill every part of that past self; had in fact resurrected much of his former personality a'purpose and brought it to the fore whenever it suited his needs. Much more so, and more often, once he’d taken to caring for Dru, and more often again when he’d had to spend time in human company amongst the bitty Scoobies. 

And then, once he’d fallen for his Slayer… 

Endgame. He’d had to rely on William far more than any demon might ever have had to do, just to stay afloat in that insanity. On the memories of that life… or on a being that had been sitting in the sodding backseat for a century. Either way you wrote the book… William had been there, coming more and more to the fore every day for Buffy’s sake, until _voila!_ All the sudden Willie was behind the wheel again, and his demon was glad to be let out for walkies once in a while.

But when you looked at how short a time he had spent down in that cellar moaning about the things he’d done… Granted he’d done some bloody awful things. And yeah, Angel deserved to spend longer with his bleeding ‘infinite remorse’, because he’d done far worse. But the fact remained… Once he’d gotten his soul back up front and center… His souled self remembered every sodding thing he’d done as the demon. Hadn’t been as if it had happened to someone else, but as if he had been there, watching, and felt responsible, somehow, for having taken part, however unwillingly.

And all of him loved Buffy; soul and demon and all. The soul came out loving her; hadn’t had to learn to know her. It had hated her for a bit too, same as the demon did, for what they’d gone through together, but mightn’t that be just as much proof? 

None of it had been new to that side of himself. She had been no sodding stranger to him. None of what they had gone through together, put one another through. And he, Spike, the composite whole of the two of them, had in the end loved her all the better for it. In a quieter, calmer, more certain way that did not require as much extravagance, and could afford the time to compose those more eloquent statements of affection that had so won her in that last year. His soul had afforded the demon greater patience of heart. A certain modicum of elegance. 

But the passion? That had come directly from his demon, and had never, and would never die. “I don’t know for certain, pet… but it could very well be that it goes that way. For one, the demon needs the human as much as the human needs the demon, innit? Human’s got nothin’ left once the demon takes over but to hang onto the demon like it’s a life-raft. Hang bits of personality all over the demon, if it wants any part of the old life to survive at all. But the demon… It’s a newborn. Needs the human to educate it on how to survive in this world, as much as it needs a sire to teach it how to be a vampire, or else all it’ll be is…”

“A really vampy human? A really humany vamp?” Buffy frowned prettily. “I mean, unless I guess, you have a sire around. Which, not many of the ones I met had.”

Spike grunted. “Bloody hellmouth. Fledges with fledges for parents. No home-training. Little animals.” He felt his face twist in disgust. “Pretty sure that’s what Angelus was scared I’d be; useless either way. He was hard on me partly ‘cause he thought I was a right nancy. Thought I relied too much on my human side. Wanted me to be like him. But I think he didn’t use the human to aid the demon the way he should. He refused all lessons from his human side, and maybe it broke his demon, bein’ all alone like that in the world with just a right bitch like Darla to teach him only how to be a git of a vamp. Without training, or the wrong training, a fledge’d be hell on wheels—and he was that—but not much use otherwise.” Spike smiled at his love. “I prefer to be able to slip between the worlds a bit more than that, so I say, why destroy the human side?”

He lifted his eyes and shrugged, feeling like he’d maybe gotten a key to himself. “I always thought it was just, demon comes in, blank-slate-like, picks up the human personality, runs with it. But maybe you’ve the way of it. Maybe the human’s there the entire time. Maybe I’ve always been William not just in name but… in all my bits, and I just flip-flop depending on who I need to be that day.” He reached out again, just shy of brushing her cheek. “Might explain a few things. Like how you can bring me to tears sometimes, Buffy, just by bein’ you.”

Buffy looked like he’d given her a prize. “I think… it really makes sense, Spike. I think… you matured your demon and your human together the whole time. Over all those years. And by the time I met you, the person I met was your ego, with glimpses of id and superego depending on the moment.” She shrugged. “Or, you know, glimpses of pure demon and pure William, depending on what we’re doing.”

/You mean fighting or shagging hard or making love, yeah? Or if I’m quoting you Wordsworth or bleeding Dylan Thomas?/

Her hand reached out, cupped his face. “So, I mean, whoever’s driving at the moment, I don’t really think you’ve changed much. The mixed you, the ego you… I think that’s always been the same. The guy you’ve always shown me, and it just gets colored by whichever side is out front that day. Before maybe it was more often the id and the ego just kind of…” She made quite an adorable sort of confused face, like she was getting lost in her own analogy. “I guess, switching back and forth, depending on how _we_ were. How I treated you, or what kind of blood you had that day, or how hungry you were, or…”

“You don’t know the half of it, luv.” Christ, she was a treat.

Her smile was dazzling. “But I think that’s why, you know, you were always so different. Why I got to know the real you, and why you only changed in these weird little ways after you went to Africa. I mean, it weirded me out, yeah, that you could be so still, and that you didn’t act on impulse so much, but that was also because…” She cut off abruptly.

They both knew why. “Yeah,” he finished for her, because better keep it unsaid.

“But I think,” she went on softly, “it was also because your two sides were kind of comfortable with each other the whole time, unlike… some other…” She stopped, floundering. 

/Unlike your other big example, yeah./ He nodded to show he saw where she was going, and she went on, clearly relieved not to have to go back down that road. “And you’re not, you know, scared of your id the way so many people are.” She looked down and away. “Including me, I guess.” She shrugged; a tiny movement that drew his attention as her hand dropped away. “Because I think… that was the problem. I’m like… the opposite. Still human in a lot of ways, but kind of demon-run. But I got trained to be afraid of what I really wanted, because…” Her hand flipped a little on the bedclothes; a tiny, sad gesture. “Angelus scared the hell out of me. And since I had no idea what I was… I thought all demons were the same, and I thought I had to deny all that. Deny you, and everything you represented. Deny myself. And I kept looking at this model of denial that I thought was so perfect as some kind of… I dunno, idealized…”

/Oh, hell./ “Angel is no bloody Christ, Buffy, and even if he was, you can’t fuck Christ.” He smirked then, shifting a little so as to draw her eye. He knew what got her motor running, whether she had ever wanted to admit it or not, knew how to get her attention. Had known for much longer than she ever had that he—his unrestrained, passionate, carousing and devil-may-care but still somehow _feeling_, loving demon—had done it for her. /Vampire, right? We have our sodding advantages./ “I understand why you wanted him. Believe me, I do. He gave you permission, didn’t he? To hide from yourself, and to wallow in all the bleedin’ guilt you feel just for being you.” She startled, and he drove on grimly, pressing his advantage. “You may even have thought, once, that you were alright without it, you wanted a bloke to stay with you so badly, but I think one good night of slaying without a decent shag and you’d’ve cracked like an egg. Because you can’t go back, once you’ve tasted what you want and can’t have.” 

His eyes trailed up and down her form, purposely suggestive. “Hormones alone might do that, and you had bein’ a Slayer to add into the mix.” /You know it wouldn’t have worked with Peaches, long-term. You know that now, don’t you, Love? The way that tosser always keeps everything under wraps, like a pent-up charge in a tin can…/ Buffy was a firecracker. You oughtn’t to let her loose in a powder keg like Angel. They’d always been destined for disaster. And he could tell by the way that she didn’t want to meet his gaze that she knew he was right. 

But she was willing to admit it now, whether she wanted to once or not. He saw it in the way she lifted blazing eyes to his. The triumph of it boiled in him, and the words slipped out before he could censor them, carried on a smirk. “I’m right, aren’t I? Right bloody stew to put you in, gettin’ you set up once and then hangin’ you out to dry like that. You were a right little time bomb, weren’t you, if you were willing to settle for…” He cut himself off abruptly, aware he might have pushed too far. Christ, he was a real prick sometimes. He waved a hand, suing for mercy. “Sorry. I shouldn’t’ve… Sour grapes.”

“No. You’re right. Riley was…” She shook her head, sounding regretful. “An attempt to make myself into something I’m not. And I think I needed to go there, to prove to myself that I could never be… that. Never be normal. That he was wrong; that normal wasn’t right for me no matter how hard I tried to tell myself… I thought there was something wrong with me that I couldn’t make it work. That I kept wanting you. Because…” Her face cracked a little. “I _wanted_ to be, Spike. Normal. What I was supposed to be. I really, really wanted to be enough for him. To be enough for everyone.” Her voice hitched, alarming him. “And instead it turned out that what I was was too much for him… just like I am for everyone. Not enough, and too much, and…”

Spike had her in his arms again, alarmed by the sudden crash from self-assurance to despair. “You’re enough for me. Never too much.” Felt her shudder, on the razor’s edge. “Always been perfect. Shine like the bleedin’ sun.” It was his chant, his mantra. “You’re the One, Buffy. Christ; how can I tell you… No one more perfect than you, just the way you are…”

When she turned her lips up to his, to fight the fall, he knew he’d been an idiot to try anything else. There was one route to distraction that had always worked with them; and where once it had been their only route, and therefore one to be avoided in favor of other communication… Sometimes, now, it was best to just go with what worked, and save the new lines for easier conversations.

***  
  
  
  
  
  
One more chapter of Month 2 to go, and then politics and action take a front seat from here on out (not that there's not still a lot of lovin', because I'm a smooshy, smutty sucker).


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to be late on this. Dunno how I missed so much time, my apologies.
> 
> Alrighty-o. Now that Buffy's able to view Angel with a certain lens removed, some things must be discussed, and about time. Which also means... this is a damnably tough chapter. **Content Warning:** after the first set of three stars, gonna get into some painful extrapolations of life in the Angelus-nest, and memories of some past, horrific shite I'm sure Angelus perpetrated on not just Dru but Spike, because I've no doubts he would treat Spike like any sadistic, dominant serial-torturer would any subbie he was trying to groom to be his partner-in-crime. In my opinion, Angelus' vampire-hazing would've been godawful, painful, torturous, and often sexually abusive. I can read their body language no other way when I watched Spike and Angel together on AtS. So fair warning, don't read that second bit of this if you don't want reflections of sexual assault, Buffy thinking of SR and how it compares (and definitely doesn't), et cetera... though I do think a lot of what comes out of the chapter is healing and growth for them both.

She had asked him not to smoke in bed after sex way back when they had first started this whole thing… which seemed like a lifetime ago. And really, back then it had more been ‘demanded’, and ‘around her at all’ than ‘in bed’ or ‘asked’. Partially that had been because it had mildly irritated her throat to have the barely-used vapors floating around above her in the crypt like a damn cloud, though to be real, the place had been high-arched enough—not to mention dank enough—that no doubt it could have eventually absorbed the odors with no real ill-effect. 

It had probably more been just another symptom of her need to lord something over him back then; to control Spike because she had not been able to control anything else in her life. And he had given her that, as he had given her so much else of himself. And yet, here and now he still clove to the letter of that request. If he wanted to light up, he always very politely extricated himself from her naked embrace and wandered over to a window, standing beautifully at his ease like some tangerine-washed ivory sculpture done by one of those Greek artists from a zillion years ago. It was mesmerizing to watch the graceful and unconscious movements of his arm and shoulder muscles, seen from behind, in any light; like an amazing, animated work of art.

In bed, though, after sex, he somehow always managed to give the impression of somebody who was smoking anyway, whether he had a lit cigarette between his fingers or not; like his post-coital bliss required at least the motions of smoking. It was actually kind of fascinating, now that Buffy let herself actually watch him, notice these little tics. He nearly always lay back with his beautifully-sculpted chest bare to the night and his amazing arms behind his head. Just lay there watching her, after, with that same expression on his face that had always been there. The same one she had seen since the very beginning; from that very first moment. That pendulum between awe to sheer, desperate lust, from smug to just… wondering amazement that she was really, actually there. 

But his fingers always twitched slightly, like they had something between them. Fiddled against the headboard, as if they longed to hold the ghost of the thing they expected. Which really made her wonder just exactly how long he had been smoking. /How long, even, have cigarettes been around? Did you take it up as, like, a hobby after you were turned? Or was it a thing you did before, as a human?/ 

Which, of course, started a whole cascade of questions in her mind, and god. How had she never realized how little she actually knew about his pre-vamp life? 

/But then, you didn’t _want_ to know, did you?/ And he hadn’t wanted her to either, since he’d needed to protect himself from her, with the way she’d always gone after any soft spots, and… /I’ll never do that to you again. And I want to _know_ you./

No time like the present, she supposed. “Spike, can I ask you a question about your life before you were sired?”

It startled him. She could tell by the way he lifted his left arm from over his head, then lifted his head too, to look down along his body at her. “‘Course you can. Not much to tell, yeah, but whatever you want to know is an open book.” He flicked his fingers and subsided back to the headboard, dismissive. “My entire nancyboy existence, poetry and all, if you want. The whole sodding catalog.”

It was a lot to ask, she knew; especially considering the way he was giving back the gift. His rough tones and self-denigration, she knew, were a clear sign that he was a more than a little uncomfortable. Well. She’d be gentle. She’d learned better in that last year… and definitely in the last two months. “Did you… smoke? Before?” Because if he had, it would explain a lot. After all, why would he start, as a vampire, when such a habit was so insanely dangerous to his species? One stray spark and… poof. Very dusty boy, right here. But here he was as a demon, just puffing away every other second, so if he came with a dedication to the sport already in place during his human life, and just couldn’t give it up after, then she supposed it made sense.

The query earned her a half-surprised, half-mocking snort. “I didn’t even bloody do snuff. Thought such habits were ‘entirely dreadful’.” She was startled at the accent he used right there at the end. He sounded almost… stuffy. Even more English than Giles, which… Wow. 

/Was that… how you _sounded_ then?/ “Oh.” /Then why…/

Even bigger ‘oh’ when she realized exactly why. /Same reason you flip your collar up and run into the sun like a doof./ Because he was _Spike_. Thumbing his nose at danger and mortality and all that stuff. /You complete idiot./

/God, I love you./

“Yeah. Perfect little teetotaler, wasn’t I? Tea and crumpets and all that rot. I was a right gentleman, wee Willie Pratt…”

The self-mocking was real. The, ‘I never took a risk in my life’ self-hate, which, wow. So thick in his voice that she was almost afraid to ask, but she really was dying to know. “Were you a… A choirboy?” After all, there _had_ to be a reason for, you know. The _voice_.

That brought him right back up again to stare at her as if she’d gone insane. She returned the look evenly, trying her best for ‘innocent, no teasing, completely sans ulterior motive here’. 

Finally, still suspicious, he subsided back to the sheets. “A’ course I was, everybody was back then. Even went to a boys’ prep school where you had to go to Chapel every day and sit there listening to the sermon and all. Sang in that, too. Bunch of bleeding ponces, all of us.” A faint twist to his lips. “But then, they raised us to be.”

“I thought so,” she murmured, half-ignoring his self-denigrating grumbles. It was nice to finally have an answer to the question that had plagued her for the better part of three years, like a niggling thorn in the back of her mind. “You have a great voice. I bet you sounded like a little angel when you were small.”

There was a sudden, dead silence from the vampire underneath her, then, “Oh bloody hell Slayer.”

She smiled a little, aware she’d inadvertently relaxed something in him. Settling back down onto his chest, she snuggled a little deeper against the quiet of the place where his undead heart, if it had a beat, would beat for her. “I did like it, you know. Even when it scared the hell out of me.”

Another short pause, then, “Wouldn’t know it from the way you rabbited like I’d gone toothy at you.”

“Yeah, well. No one likes to hear the truth when they’re being all avoid-y.”

“Mmmm.”

They lay still for a moment, with her wondering what he was making of all this. After some fairly long period his hand slid down from its perch above his head, though, and he began to stroke her hair. “You’ve a nice voice yourself, luv.”

That made her jerk up a little to eye him in turn, because when the hell had he heard her? “Were you following me around Shady Rest or something?”

“No, I… Were you singing while you did the slaying?” A broad, delighted grin touched his lips then, lighting his face. “Christ, I’d kill to see that.”

“Oh, shut up.” Propping herself up on her elbow, she surveyed him sternly. “Give. When did you hear me?”

He sobered, looked away a bit. “Got good hearing, Buffy. Vampire, remember? Heard you all the way in before you started to smoke.” His lips compressed to a thin line. “Could’ve stood to hear you sing for a bit longer, but when you cut off I knew I had to get in there and stop you.” The hand started again, stroking. “Could’ve listened to you all night, tellin’ ‘em all, finally, what they all needed to hear.”

“Yeah, well…” Regrets tumbled through her, chased by old pains and crystalized amidst the blankness that remained inside the hollow places. And, she was embarrassed. That he’d heard, when he clearly had such a literally _great_ voice. Trained and everything. And, just, ugh.

“Liked your voice, pet,” he repeated softly. “It’s a right nice one.”

“Nothing on yours.” Dropping back down, she turned her head a little to resettle her cheek against his sternum. “I guess I kind of surprised myself,” she admitted after a moment. And because maybe it would change the subject, and because she was still eager to know more about his past, shifted again to prop herself up on her forearms, elbows astride his ribcage. Seated her chin on her knuckles to look up into his face. “Tell me more about pre-Spike William.”

“Oh, bleeding hell, Buffy, there’s nothing to tell. I was a right closet-case till I got a bit of demon on me, saw the world. Grew up a bit…”

“Tell me?” she whispered, because she knew he would deny her nothing that she wanted.

She was right. He sighed heavily. “Bloody hell.” And he went all tense in her arms, voice taut as an overwrought harp string. “I was quiet,” he answered tightly. “Shy, even; worse’n Glinda. Even had the sodding stutter, a bit.” His face closed up, but she could still see what he was feeling in those insanely expressive eyes; filling now with an old anguish. “And I loved me mum. She was all I had, so I right doted on her.”

/Oh. So we have that in common too./ It was kind of a revelation. 

Buffy tried to hear a stuttering Spike, and couldn’t quite manage it. Tried to picture a quiet Spike… and could see it only just around the edges; in the agonizing way he had withdrawn whenever she had hurt him, before… and in those first weeks when he’d been in the basement with his soul there to plague him with uncertainty about their past. /That’s William. The inner core of you that never left, all shored up by a demon-side that wouldn’t let you hide anymore. That told you to stand up and speak up, huh? And eventually you just… never stopped. And now that’s who you are. The guy who spouts off all the time to protect that smooshy poet underneath./ It made so much sense… and it made her want to dig her fingers into his ribs, drag him close, kiss him, maybe nip him a little to keep herself from telling him he was adorable, because he would just scoff if she did. 

Besides; right now he’d probably take it the wrong way, so… “What was her name?” Buffy heard herself ask softly, instead.

A brief jerk of azure in her direction, as if he were gauging her response. “Anne.”

/Oh. Well. Damn./

“I idolized her,” Spike went on grimly. “So much so that I had no bleeding experience with women, as I spent all my time with her. Filled all my dreams with idiot romantic ideas of love that had not a whit of reality to them, and tried to fit real women into a right load of unrealistic concepts that none of them could match up to. Put them on pedestals; including me mum. She died tryin’ to live up to what I thought of her.”

“How…” She almost didn’t want to ask, considering she knew the trigger the First had put on him had had something to do with his mother, but… “How did she die?”

His face went totally bleak. “Officially, tuberculosis. Though we called it consumption, then. Didn’t know a bloody thing about what caused it, yeah? Just knew it ate you up, from the inside.” His voice went quiet. “That, and all the cancers...”

It hit her like a ton of bricks. Spike, sitting with her, after her mother died. Silent and understanding, when everyone else had no idea. Except Tara, who had also lost her mother. “It’s always sudden, isn’t it?” she asked him quietly. “Even when it’s not?”

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly, and something seemed to twist inside him. He spoke again, like a truth was prodding him to get out. “I just wanted her to stay. Wanted her to meet Dru…” His eyes closed tight in some kind of private misery… and she had a sudden memory of the old, pre-chip Spike. Sitting with her own mother at the kitchen table. Never a single ounce of threat in his bearing; just drinking hot chocolate with her and eating up the motherly attention Mom had always given out so freely. Relationship advice, she thought she remembered; probably the kind he had never been able to get from his own mother, since that had been right about after he’d broken up with Drusilla. 

“I wish I would’ve known,” she interrupted him, feeling a deep, swirling regret. “Back then all I saw was the bloodsucking fiend. I thought you had some ulterior motive, you know? That you were using my mom to get something from me.” She lifted her eyes to his, reached out with one hand to touch his scarred eyebrow. “But you were just trying to recapture the feeling, weren’t you? Of having a mother…”

He caught her hand before she could touch him. “I turned me mum, Buffy. When I brought Dru to her. Fresh from clawing my way from my grave. I was an idjit fledge, and I thought I should just… pass on the sodding gift. Save her from her disease. Give her the feeling of rushing, insane, heady life I’d got, yeah?”

/Oh. Oh, God./

His eyes closed again, and his head turned away a little. Too late, though, and she saw the tear glistening on the verge of one eyelash, heard the catch in his voice. “Guess the demon she got was a bit feistier than mine, though. Took me years to get over the things she said to me after. To realize it wasn’t me mum sayin’ ‘em. That it was the demon, and the demon didn’t love me.” A shudder rolled through his entire body, traveled to his throat as a tremor. “I had to… stake her. Put her out of it.”

/Oh, Spike…/ The thought of having to kill… something wearing her own mother’s face… She had had to come close, once, briefly, when Dawn had summoned Mom back from the grave. But she hadn’t had to. Hadn’t had to face the choice he had had to look straight in the eye. 

No wonder he looked so damned broken. 

No wonder the First had been able to haunt him the way It had for so long. 

“It’s been a bit better,” he whispered, “once I realized it wasn’t her. That it was even worse a misery than the consumption, what I’d put her through. That it wasn’t any kind of a gift. Not for her. Not like it was for me.” His entire frame was taut, his cheekbones standing out with an old, carven agony. “It freed me from my life, but it put her into chains. Took me till the showdown with Wood to realize… I had to forgive myself. That sending her to dust was me settin’ her free. For real, in the end.”

She moved up. Laid the hand of clemency on his cheek. “I’m sure she’s grateful, William.”

“Still was the one did her in, yeah?” His eyes were still focused somewhere over her left shoulder, avoiding her gaze. “Twice, even, depending on how much of her was left the second time around.”

There wasn’t much she could say to that. But his haunting called to mind something for her. The deference and respect with which he had always courted her mother. She had always put it off as an extension of his general weakness for Summers women, or before that, as some way to get in good with her, but… 

But now she remembered an unmarked bouquet of some beat-up-looking flowers that looked like they’d been picked from people’s gardens, or maybe even from the side of the road, that Willow had brought in a few nights after her own mother had died, and set aside on the mantle without a word. When she had asked who they were from she had just said_, “Never mind. They’re… They were meant to be anonymous.”_ And she had been so broken up she had just let it go with a nod, wandered off, ignoring Xander’s twisted, angry expression, but… “Spike, did you bring my mother flowers, after she…”

His head jerked up, and he his eyes met hers once more, hot and rough and damp. “You weren’t supposed to know about that. Didn’t even think you’d see them. The boy got in my face about coming; thought I was doin’ it just to get close to you, as if I’d use such a thing at a time like that to try to get in your knickers. He never did have any class.”

/Oh, dammit, Xander./

“I just threw them away, since they weren’t gonna let me by. I damn well admired Joyce. She was a right nice lady.” And the trembling note in his voice, the fine shaking in his hands, still paused in the act of caressing her hair, said it all.

She lifted up, touched her lips to his. “Thank you, Spike.”

His hand began to move again, pressed her head close to keep her there. “You better not bloody leave me again, you know. I won’t have it. I’m about bleeding done with loving women and watching them sod off out of my life.”

And oh, god… it was only then that she realized that she had been doing to him the one thing that he had never, ever done to her. /God, you even came back from _dusting_ so we could have another shot at this, somehow. But people have always left you, too… including me./ 

It was the same thing that had always been done to her. And it was a fear and a wound she had somehow never realized before that they shared. That William the Bloody had learned to give all his love to people who held him at a distance, just as she had done. To cling to those who pushed him away, or turned aside and ran. /Dammit, no wonder you fell for me, of all screwed up jerks. Shit, shit, shit…/ 

Except unlike Buffy Summers, Spike had never before had anyone stay for him the way he had for her. Never had anyone turn around and give that back; that constancy he always gave. /That was part of why you always scared me so bad. I didn’t know if I could give you what you needed. But now…/ 

/It’s different once you give in, say the words when you already know they’re gonna leave./ Buffy had given up her long-held prophylaxis of fear in the face of the ultimate loss, and finally admitted the truth, because the loss was coming anyway, and denying the emotion couldn’t have stopped it any more than it could stop the flames licking up their joined flesh. /And it’s different once you realize what it earns you to run. When you find out how much worse it is than your worst fear; to go without that hand in the dark. Kind of makes you able to face all those other stupid fears and chase back for a change; because fearing yourself isn’t so damn important anymore./ 

/Because nothing is worse, nothing is more terrifying, than knowing that you wasted the time you did have./ 

/I promise, Spike. We’re not gonna do that anymore./ “Well, then, I guess I’d better not go anywhere, huh?”

***

“I sang… that it wasn’t real, then.”

“Yeah.” His voice was tight still. Armored. 

She shifted against his chest. “We turned to be the realest thing that I would ever have, you know? God, that’s ironic, isn’t it?”

He was silent for a moment, but she could tell by the purring feeling in the blood that he was moved. “What about… Angel?” he asked quietly. “Seem to recall you thinkin’ that was pretty bloody real for a long damn time.”

Her lips twisted, remembering all the ways in which that had turned out to be a lie. /He stood in front of me and pretended; to my face. For _years_./ “Yeah, well… that never got a chance to be real, did it? It just _stopped_.”

After a second or two she felt him nod. “He’s good at that. After he was cursed he just… left us. Darla’d already gone off. The bitch was never much in the way of good company, and certainly never took anything like responsibility for either of us. She only cared about Angelus. Once her ‘darling boy’ was gone, her favorite creation, she was in the wind. But you’d think he’d hang about, yeah? Since he’d _created_ Dru, if not for me.” He sighed, heavily. “Not that he didn’t create me, too, in a lot of ways, but he’d never take responsibility for me. I was a project; occasionally a bloke to pal around with, when I wasn’t being a bloody disappointment. More a minion than anything, though, since he’d never have chosen me. But for Dru, you’d think he’d...” The grief that laced his voice actually shocked Buffy. “But he just pissed off, didn’t he, and left us to fend for ourselves.” And his tones went from low and angry to haunted, almost querulous. “Dru was inconsolable for a decade. Could barely hold her together. Had to force-feed her. She was a right mess.” His mouth twisted. “You thought she was mad when you knew her, Buffy, but when her ‘Daddy’ abandoned her, she went straight off her bird for so long I thought I’d never get her back.”

It struck Buffy then; another source of the endless bitterness and… almost, longing she saw all the time from Spike, toward Angel. “He abandoned you, didn’t he?” God, could she ever understand that, being left to deal by a father-figure, responsible for a broken sibling—well, one who was also a mother figure-slash-lover because vampires were twisted, but still—and suddenly thrust into ‘adulthood’ without any warning while the parent just booked it out of your life without a phone call for a hundred years. It put yet another dimension on the whole ‘people always left’ thing, if it wasn’t just her and Dru. /Angel was like… an absentee father to you, wasn’t he? And wow. What must that have felt like for you, to watch a person you saw that way be in _relationships_ you weren’t a fan of with the people you loved most, the ones _you_ wanted?/

Buffy didn’t even want to think about what that would be like. But the godawful thought intruded nonetheless. /It would be like Dad leaving us _after_ Mom died, with Dawn having to take care of me if I was actually crazy from the asylum. Except what if Dad also slept with Dawn’s significant others first… and also slept with Dawn. And slept with me. And that’s the grossest thing I have ever thought in my entire life, and we’re just going to put that one away in a big, big lockbox and never open it again./ Though, it put things in perspective. Her father was a jerk who had cheated on her mother, didn’t care about his kids, and never paid child support, which sure as hell could have helped out a couple years ago during the whole Doublemeat thing (and to be fair, Buffy still wasn’t sure why Child Services weren’t harder on him about that when they knew she was struggling), but, well… /At least he never… did _that!_/ “Abused you, ignored you… and then abandoned you?” 

Spike was watching her now as if she had just seen into some locked room in his mind. “Yeah, luv. He did at that.”

A short silence fell between them. Spike broke it with a faint chuckle. “Somethin’ we have in common, pet.”

“Hm?” She felt oddly outside herself, watching his animated features. 

“Abandonment’s the greatest crime, to you, innit?”

/Of course. I mean… You leave me and… it means I’m… I’m not worth anything. I mean, _I _can run, or freeze people out before they can leave, but…/ 

/God, does that make me my dad?/

“It’s the greatest crime in vamp-families too. You nest together. Everything’s about sensation and blood-connection. To break that is the greatest possible crime.” He tilted his head slightly, watching her. “There are really no other crimes, yeah? I mean, aside from disobedience against a sire… but even that is forgivable; or it’s death. Obey or dust; but you don’t _leave_.”

Buffy felt something that might have been a laugh work up through her throat. “Makes sense why you were able to put up with me as long as you did.”

His eyes were soft on hers. “Compared to some, you were a right easy taskmistress.”

/Well, ouch./ 

She lifted her eyes to meet his with an effort. It frightened her to ask it. She almost didn’t want to know, but… now she felt like she really needed to. It would be opening the door to that room; pushing it even further ajar than she had ever thought she would and looking at things about her ex’s past that she had never wanted to see too closely, but… it was time. She could face the answers, now that she was able to hear them without reacting badly, defensively. And she owed it to him. 

Whether it was hard to ask or not, it was time she _knew_, finally, who Spike was, and who William was; and who he was now a composite person. Time she knew more than what he had ever dared to show her before, in the hopes that she might never leave him. /Maybe now I’m ready. And I think… he needs me to./ 

It was definitely time she showed him that even if there were things there she didn’t want to know, she still planned to stay right here. “What was it like?” she heard herself whisper. “Growing up… in that nest? Being raised by… Drusilla and Angelus?” And how weird was vamp life that the person who raised you was so often the person you ended up taking care of and having sex with, and, just… 

No wonder vamps ended up with some weird ideas about relationships.

Spike slid out from under her to rise abruptly. Pulled another cigarette from the pack on the nightstand, and headed for the window. “You really want to know that, Buffy?” He wasn’t looking at her anymore, stood leaning out of the thick casement and staring out into the bronzing twilight, the question posed with a precision that bespoke pain. 

/Don’t pull away./ “I probably should, huh? It’s a part of who you are. And you know pretty much all there is to know about me.”

That drew a scoff from him, though he didn’t turn around. “Not ruddy likely, luv. You’re like prying open a lockbox sealed a half-dozen times over. But I’ll leave you for another time.”

God, he made her sound like she was just one giant secret. She had always thought he could look right through her… but she supposed when it came right down to it, knowing how she ticked wasn’t nearly the same thing as hearing the details. Past, history, hopes, dreams. All the conversations she had never allowed them to have. And if she demanded he share his inner self with her… she could not but open up and give him back the same wealth. 

She would do it. Later. “I’m an open book,” she promised.

That earned her a quick blue glance over his shoulder. “Nice of you to say, pet, but I’m betting I’m gonna need a prybar and a stick of dynamite.” And he turned the rest of the way around to lounge back with his elbows against the window frame, the arm with the cigarette hanging cocked out of the opening. It was a posture calculated to proudly display his body to maximum effect, and he knew it. Knew what it did to her to wave himself in front of her like a stud at market. “Luckily, I come bearing all the tools of the trade…” he informed her with a smirk, and rolled his tongue behind his teeth so as to leave exactly zero question in anyone’s mind which tools he meant to use in his inquisition.

“Way to encourage a girl to play hard to get.”

His eyebrows shot up with interest, and he leered at her, smirk intensifying. “Well, now.”

She was on the verge of being pried open, clearly. Note to self never to give William the Bloody a challenge like that. He liked challenges too damned much. “I thought we were starting with you.”

He deflated like a balloon. “Oh, yeah. Right.” With a sigh, he pulled the cigarette in. Took a long drag that put paid to the remaining half of the thing in one fell swoop, then blew an impressive column of smoke out of the open portal as if it were some kind of venting system. “Oh, hell. It was like bein’ in a pressure-cooker, alright, Buffy?” Flicking the butt out the window, he spun around and faced her, tense now and uncomfortable. “Know what you saw was him off his trolley, but he wasn’t like that most of the time I knew him, yeah? Think that was because he’d been buried so long. Drove him sack of hammers, stuck under the soul, bein’ forced to feel for ages. Before…” He shrugged, looked away. “I think once he’d killed off his soul beyond reckoning and could be at peace with his demon self, he was just a fine old monster.” Lapis eyes found hers, begged her to understand. “He was a sire to be proud of. Whole. Magnificent. Not mad like you saw him. Not starved and vengeful.” 

Spike shook his head, fiddled with the pack of cigarettes once more like he was considering lighting another. Pulled one out. Shoved it back in, avoiding her eyes… almost as if he was afraid to admit something to her; something she’d hate about him, or… “He was one of the greats. Buffy, I was honored to be his get.” A tight inhale. “I fucking idolized that vamp. I wanted him to be proud of me more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life. To the point where… Christ.” His hand tightened, like he was about to crush the whole pack, and then to her shock, he tossed them away from himself, toward the nightstand. With typical vampire grace, they fell exactly where he’d aimed, landing perfectly beside the flask, and Spike whirled to face the window again, arms outstretched, pushing, body bent; like he was trying to escape something. “You’ll think I’m a right jealous prick, yeah? But sometimes it’s bloody hard to watch him, the way he looks at Connor, because the little git didn’t earn a thing he’s got, and meanwhile I…”

Understanding exploded in Buffy, followed swiftly by empathy as she remembered how it felt to watch her mother love on Dawnie, baby her, while she in turn had always had to be the strong one, the capable one, the together one who never got to just crawl into anyone’s lap and put everything down, and…

/Oh, God./ “You tried so hard, and he’ll never give it to you.” It explained so much; about what Spike became, despite his nature, during his time in Angelus’ nest. “And a part of you still wants it.”

He couldn’t turn back. She knew he was trying not to let her see how much it still hurt him. “I’m sorry, pet,” he whispered. “I know it doesn’t make any sense to you, that it’s hard for you to hear, but…”

She shook her head. “No, I get it. We all have… parents we want to get that from. That approval we might never have. We’ll do anything for it; to get it again, whatever little crumbs…” She closed her eyes, remembering Giles. How pitifully badly she’d wanted it, even after he’d done… what he’d done. To Spike, even. That was the worst part. A betrayal she couldn’t even mention. “I get it.”

He nodded, still looking out into the semi-gloom. “It wasn’t easy, for all that,” he whispered, so quietly she barely heard him. “Angelus was a right bastard, and even when I was one too, I could never live up to what he wanted me to be. He wanted a nice little mirror held up to him. Thought once he had me—a playmate he could mold to look just like him—it meant maybe he wouldn’t feel so bloody alone in being the sociopath he was. Had to hide every ounce of feeling I had, or he’d quash it…”

/Oh, God…/

“First thing he did was fuck Dru in front of me; to show me that romantic notions of love were for mortals. ‘To free me,’ he said. Teach me vampires could take what we wanted, but never truly _have_ anything; never deserve anything, never belong to anyone. Because we’re ‘free’…” The sardonic twist to his tones did nothing to hide the pain he’d carried since, for a century. All the messages he’d rebelled against since his siring; every time he’d looked into her eyes. 

And all messages she had continually repeated back to him. /I’m… Oh God, I’m so _sorry_, Spike./

He turned slowly back from the window, and now his eyes on hers were bleak. Almost gray. “He knew I was besotted with her. Probably even believed he was doin’ me a favor…”

/Yeah, that sounds like Angelus…/ It was really disgusting, the things Angel’s demon could come up with to torture people.

“I tried and tried to do what I thought he wanted. Slaughtered a whole town once, hoping to please him. Wasn’t hard, back then, with the hot fledge blood runnin’ through me. But he just told me I was taking too many risks, callin’ too much attention to the nest. That I had no bleedin’ _artistry_.” 

She had seen examples of Angelus’ idea of ‘artistry’ too, in that half a year or more he had terrorized her and her family and friends. The thought of being held helpless under his tutelage, never knowing what he did and didn’t want and struggling to figure out the ‘right’ thing by trial and error with every option turning out ‘wrong’, for God knew how many years, sounded unbelievably awful. Like being under the thumb of a mercurial, abusive parent and never knowing when the unpredictable punishments were going to fall, and all the while praying for the days you might get the approving hand, and not the hated one. 

No wonder Spike—a vampire who had so clearly shown an ability to be a fairly gentle, emotional demon, if still a lover of chaos and battle—had in the end become a monster in his own right.

Angelus had made him into one.

“One time,” Spike whispered, looking away at the wall, “he caught me trying to make love to Dru. He had a bit of a game goin’ with us in the beginning, yeah? Kept tryin’ to see to it that if I had her again, it was in front of him, or with the rest of them in a bleedin’ orgy or some such shite; not alone, where I could feel like it was anything loving or romantic.” His mouth twisted hard enough that Buffy could read the agony in it from his profile, in his shoulders, in his voice. “Not that she knew much about romance or loving, after what he’d done to her. She only knew pain, couldn’t come without it.” An agonized little shrug. “I was still learnin’, still thought if I could just get her away by herself again, get the way of sex, maybe I could make her see what love was about. Thought inexperience was my problem…”

/Inexperience?/

“Was still a right nancy, had no idea about it, why I couldn’t touch her, and all that hot fledgling blood running through me said I should just keep shagging till I got it right, yeah? But Angelus wouldn’t have it unless he might twist it…” God; the torment in his voice. “Any road, at some point Darla came back, and they went off to do something decadent with a few peasants that took two days’ worth of screaming. Thought he’d be gone a bit longer, yeah?” His entire being, every line of his taut body shouted that he was about to tell her something awful. “Thought it was my chance to be alone with Dru; love her like she deserved, show her what we could be…” His hands, gripping the windowsill so hard the stucco crumbled. “First time I’d dared try to get her alone since I’d risen. Thought maybe I could make it a little less of a soddin’ disaster, since I knew a bit more of what I was about by then. Didn’t know what I was doin’ at the start.”

He was looking away again, maybe embarrassed, and oh. /Oh. God./ Had he been a virgin when Dru had…

/_Oh_./

Spike’s voice had turned monotone as the recounting went on, his entire affect flat, as if telling a story that had occurred in someone else’s life. “He pulled me away from her before we could finish. Dru was ecstatic, knowing ‘Daddy’ was about to punish her for being ‘bad’.” The flat tones went bleak. “Suppose I should’ve known that was half the draw, for her, since she’d never made up to me before then, really. Not till later, once he got tired of the game and found other amusements than playin’ the sadistic bobby with us…” The pained note returned, with interest. “Even the first time, though she was nice enough about my shortcomings, she spent most of it talking to the sodding stars.”

God, and Buffy had thought her first time had been bad.

“…Course, I was just so grateful to have her lookin’ at me with some favor that I wasn’t thinkin’ that it might be a trap. One of their sick little games...” 

God, Drusilla and Angelus had been so seriously messed up.

“But it was, and he did punish her. In front of me, of course, so as to punish me as well. Tied her up proper, beat her bloody, abused her for a day or so and rogered her till she was barely able to speak.” He shuddered, still fighting hard to avoid her eyes. “Then he came for me. Said if I needed attention so badly he could give it to me.” 

The chill in Buffy’s hands fled to her stomach. /Oh. Oh God no, don’t tell me that he…/

“Darla kept telling us we had to ‘make it up’. Make things right between us so ‘our family’ would be whole again.” His voice was uninflected, now, and moving like an unstoppered thing. “So he just caressed my cheek a bit, like it was going to be a nice bonding thing. Kissed me, even… then pushed me down over the sideboard in front of Dru.”

/No, no, no…/ She didn’t want to hear this. Wanted to tell him to stop. Wanted to beg him to… but she knew… he had to finish now. 

He was chanting it, almost; flat and emotionless, like it had happened to someone else. “Made sure she watched, yeah? Said… if I didn’t let him get on with it that he’d hurt her another sunset to sunset.” He swallowed, and his eyes fluttered, though they remained open, staring into nothing that Buffy could see. “So I let him. Like he knew I would; for her. Kept calling me ‘her knight’… but sarcastic-like; not sweet, like she did.” 

His voice tightened a little, his flat affect falling away for just a moment. “I let him do it to me. And he made sure it hurt. For as long as he could stand to make it last.” A little shrug; one that made everything in her weep for him. “Angelus was no sodomite by nature, but he didn’t mind buggering someone if he got what he wanted out of it, and what he wanted from most was pain. Made sure I kept my eyes on Dru the whole time. And that she kept her eyes on me.” Another fine tremor ran visibly through him, so wild that it made every muscle in his chest and legs shudder. “She laughed while it happened. But I knew it wasn’t for me. It was because she was off her bloody trolley. Because her ‘Daddy’ had made her so bleedin’ mad so long before I came along that, to her… that was a gift.” And his voice trailed off into a real agony, come back to life. “That was love.” 

His eyes sought the carpet, buried tears lodged in his throat. “All I ever wanted was to show her what love really could be. But by the time I got to her… I couldn’t get through. Because she couldn’t hear me through the noise he’d put in her head.” And he shuddered again, eyes lost in the horrifying past.

/Oh God, oh God, oh God… What do I do?/ Should she go to him? Should she… What should she even say? What _could_ she? 

This was a _real_ rape, he was telling her about, here. This wasn’t about some hopeless, last-ditch attempt to make contact. This was wanting someone to _suffer;_ about wanting them _not_ to want it. The difference was abundantly clear to her, in this moment. Because when Spike had come at her in the bathroom, it had been some stupidly misguided attempt to connect with her; to get contact back. He’d wanted her to _want_ it. In his idiotic demon way, he’d been trying to seduce her. He’d gone about it all wrong, of course, but he’d actually believed that if he’d just kept at her long enough she’d ‘feel it’ with him, because that’s how it had always worked with them before. Because his demon had been, and remained, a creature of impulse, thinly reined-in by love, and that mangled by over a hundred years of twisted definitions; some of them wrought by yours truly. Because he’d been used to ‘no means yes’ from her, and because the only safe-word, the only true ‘no’ they had ever had between them had been a punch in the face, or her kicking him away… so when, just that one time, she hadn’t been physically capable, he hadn’t heard the word until it was too late. 

The fact remained that he had been desperately trying to reconnect with her literally the only way he knew how—the only way she had ever permitted him—through sex, because up to that moment it had been the only path he had ever been given to even attempt to get his emotional needs met. 

This, though? What had been done to him?

Angelus not been trying to connect, by any stretch. Not except by maybe those insane Angelus definitions. And he certainly had not wanted Spike to want it. He had had been trying to punish, to instruct; and he had _wanted_ Spike to hate it. To say no, so he could wield power; to abuse and control, dehumanize and demoralize. He’d _intended_ for the lack of consent, because the thrill for him was to force himself on the other person regardless. To cause pain, and to torture both physically and emotionally. 

It made her realize, belatedly, that what had happened between herself and Spike had been, in intent, the polar opposite of rape, whatever the fallout. It didn’t change her experience of the thing, and she was obviously glad she had stopped him long enough for him to realize that she wasn’t feeling what he was, so that they wouldn’t have that between them. To come back from that would have been… probably impossible. 

But this… was good to know. Good to have this comparison in intent. Because that difference in intent was being described to her right now, in plain language, and it was _horrifying_.

God; and she had wondered why Spike had always been so touchy about the subject of Angel; a man who wore the face of the creature who had abused him and tortured him and the woman he’d loved for the first however-many decades of his long existence, if only because Angelus hadn’t been able to turn Spike into a mirror image of his godawful self… and Drusilla simply because he _could_. Because it had been a _game_ to him. “Spike, I am _so_ sorry.”

His hand was already up before she could finish, waving her off. “It was a long time ago, Buffy, and vamps heal quick from things that would kill a human. Easier, too, for a demon to come back from summat like that, yeah? We’re a tactile lot—me more’n most—an’ that’s what I was taught. That’s how you got love. How you got contact. Any road, that’s just what you did. Want, take, have.” Something exited his mouth that might have been a dark chuckle. “Never hold, but take, sure.”

“Spike…”

He forestalled her with a quick headshake, eyes piercing hers, as if fighting to get her to understand something. “No right or wrong, Buffy, and only the moment. No yesterday, no tomorrow. A few days later we were all meant to be one happy family again, shaggin’ together in a nice circle-jerk. And a young demon being what it is, I got along.”

/What? How… God, _how?_/

He must have read her expression. “Got what I needed, Buffy. Someone to touch me. To feel… Well, not loved, maybe, but appreciated for a moment. To feel a bit close to someone…”

The memory hit her like a ton of bricks. His voice, in the darkness of her kitchen, over a year ago. _“I’ve never… been close… to anyone.”_

/Oh God, oh God… And then I… And then when we…/

Suddenly, tying someone up to declare one’s undying love made a whole hell of a lot more sense, not to mention all the insane games he used to play with his Morticia. _“Tie her up, torture her till she likes me again. Love’s a funny thing…” _Holy, holy shit. 

/Like hell you got what you needed./

“Course, I don’t mind sayin’ it gave me a few boundary issues, from a human standpoint…”

/Well, yeah, you _think?_/ But still. Talk about understanding things a lot more, with context.

“…But from the demon standpoint it buggered me up a lot less till I got the soul back and had to think of it again, yeah?” He shrugged slightly, a faint quirk to his mouth. “Reframed a lot of things. Like that business when I chained…”

Buffy flung her hand up automatically to cut him off. “Don’t. I get it. Just… don’t.”

He nodded, looking anxious, and she realized belatedly that he thought she was still mad about it. She could see it by the way his shoulders went all stiff and unyielding, betraying a fierce agitation buried in that new stillness he could evoke sometimes, with the soul. “No. I mean… you don’t have to. I get it, now.” And this time she fought to temper the rage in her voice; at Angelus, and at herself, so that she could hear underneath it the understanding she was trying to convey.

After a moment’s scan of her face he nodded; either accepting her words at face value or just willing to move on as he struggled with definitions. “The thing of it is, Buffy; with us? In the past? You wanted me, you took me, yeah? I wanted you… I tried. No harm, no foul, right?” 

It struck, slow as molasses but with the weight of a train, what he was trying to tell her. Because with that lens, it finally made sense. How he had forgiven so many things she had done, and in turn expected her to put aside what he had done. To move on to the next stupid thing they might do to each other without reflection or consequence. 

It had taken the translator of the soul to finally, fully understand the demon mentality; or at least a part of it. And with that, she could maybe fathom the edges of how Spike could have gone on living with Angelus, even worshipped and loved him, for years, after something like… Like _that_. 

And from there… how Spike had gone on loving and worshipping _her_, after… everything; even as he had never thought she might forgive _him_. Because she was human, while he…

/But I’m not. Not fully./ And it was the part of her that wasn’t steeped in that human litany which had fought back against those definitions all through their affair, and after that godawful night in the bathroom; the side of her which was a little demon-y, and understood, always had, all of this. The part of her which had forgiven Spike the second he had pulled back; had realized, and stopped, and looked at her with such horror. Because that part of her understood that part of him... and always had.

‘Want, take, have’ had so many damned facets. Except that her vampire was an anomaly. Because he had never ceased wanting to hold. /Which is why… we work. I just had to believe you enough to let you./

“Bit harder to face now,” he broke into her thoughts quietly, “to look back at it all now, and wonder how I got on, lookin’ at it with the soul on board, innit? Tougher to recount it, now, than it was to come back from it and live with them, then.” 

Buffy nodded, found her voice in a low, cracked whisper. “Because you had to. And that was just the way it was.”

He shrugged it off with a clear effort. “Yeah, well.” Turning away again, he looked out at the smoky light. “I got past it, even if Dru never did. Like I said, he finally got bored of terrorizing us, or maybe Darla got bored of it and decided to distract him with other games. Dru and I finally got it together eventually, sometime roundabout a year in, but…” Another fine tremor ran through him and he shook his head a little, a faint twisted smile crossing his face in profile. The one that said that whatever else he might be telling her with his words, he was in pain. “It wasn’t even the first time he’d buggered me, though it was the last.” 

/It… Huh? You… He…/

An almost inaudible noise—she thought it might even have been a weak chuckle—drifted up from his frame, to the accompaniment of shaking shoulders. “Dunno if he even remembers the first time, he was so deep in his cups. Had me behind a pub after we’d both had a bit of blood. We were both pissed as hell and he thought it was time I had a bit of education. Never like to admit he had me in that way before Dru ever did, but I had a nice time, that time.” He shook his head slowly, turned again so that his eyes met hers, cobalt and aching with a hundred-year-old agony. “Don’t try to count the other. Try not to remember it, most years. Like you said, Buffy… Like you’ve probably had to do with your lot; you can forget a lot, if you have to live with people. You get by. Learn what you have to do to earn their approval, keep their attention on other things.”

Yes, she knew about that. But it was nothing like the same level of… /It’s nowhere near the same./

The haunted eyes closed briefly, and his voice went unaccountably rough. “But I reckon I know which ‘intimacy’ I’d erase,” he told her quietly, “did those bleeding Oracles ever gave me a chance to take back a day.”

Buffy was up before she even knew she was moving, had her arms around him without even wondering anymore if it was remotely a good idea. “Spike…”

“Hey.” He shrugged it off, moving uncomfortably in her embrace. “We’ve all got crosses to bear, yeah? Just… Never think it’s all about you, when I have my issues with the ponce. Our problems go back way before you were ever a twinkle. Can’t help it if I get bristly when I know he’s about, or that I worry he might hurt someone I love more than I ever loved Dru; and God, Buffy. I never thought I’d love anyone like I loved her, but you…”

She had his head down and was kissing him, holding him close, unsure what else to give him but her heart. Her heart, all of her… and the knowledge that from now on, for the rest of his existence, he came first. “I understand, she whispered, pulling a little away from his mouth. And she did. The brittle, hurt shell of him, and the certitude of pain that came from her willingness to give wholeheartedly for so long of her love to someone who had so damaged him… but never to him. “I want you to know,” she told him, quiet and certain, “that… I get it now.” After all, she had had to forgive Angel’s face for Angelus’ crimes, too. Harder, somehow, than forgetting the things a composite being had done, and atoned for, before your very eyes. Because the soulless monster never would beg forgiveness, would never reform, would never even try to atone. Would do it again, in an instant, if given the chance; and laugh gleefully while he did it.

And that true monster was always there, behind those same dark eyes, chuckling and awaiting his chance to strike. They all knew it. And still, Angel had always been there, tugging at her gaze, while Spike, who had long deserved her attention... “I understand.”

He pulled away a little, eyes cutting sideways a little to catch on hers. And locked there. “Do you, Buffy? Do you?”

She nodded, and caught his scarred hand to pull it, in hers, to where her heart beat steady in her chest. “You have definitely earned my undivided attention; Spike, William, Pratt.”

He shuddered a little. Groaned and lowered his forehead to her shoulder. “I thought I told you not to call me that whole bleedin’ mouthful.”

“Have to let you know I mean it.” She gave him a little nudge with the point of her shoulder. “Did you get the message yet?”

His head turned, rolling on the wave of her movement, and his cheek settled into the nook of her neck so that he could kiss the dip just above her shoulder blade. “You, Buffy Summers, have always had my undivided attention.”

* * *

And we're done with Month 2.   
  
Month 3 is where we kick into high (eventful) gear in this thing.   
Thank you to all of you who've stuck with me thus far as we continue with this monster of a fic, with your kudos and comments. I love all of you so much!


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your continued patronage! Today is my "catch up on comments" day. I will labor diligently... though I seem to have caught the dread influenza, which may step on my plans a bit.   
In the meantime... I finally have y'all caught up! Welcome to Month 3 in Hell-A!
> 
> We open with a bang, not a whimper.

**Month III:**

Their third month in hell was marked by a regular influx of deserters from various nearby demon-territories, as word got out more and more regularly that they were a safe-zone not just for human refugees but also for demons who were willing to coexist, put up with a new world order that included space for all and sundry to live in relative, un-snacky peace. 

One such deserter, though, caused Buffy more than a little heartache. For one, it didn’t seem all that inoffensive. Six-and-a-half feet tall, red, hairy, scaly, horns in places, glowing eyes… Basically exactly the sort of demon that, if she would have run across it in Restfield some night back home, her entire mindset would have been, ‘Oh, man, here we go’. 

Except, when the terrifying-looking demon caught sight of her, standing there off to one side of Spike’s seat at court… it recoiled like it had been shot with a blow-dart. “Oh my Gods!” it shrieked. “Slayer!” 

And hid behind the chair Illyria used as a throne, like Buffy was the terrifying one.

The entire court froze. Everyone she had come to know here in Hell-A. Which was when… /Oh. Crap./ She realized her secret identity was out. 

Spike was up, of course, and turning toward the demon, either to reassure it or to hush it up, she wasn’t sure which. Illyria was rising as well, with slow, regal grace, while everyone else remained stymied by the sudden change in atmosphere… but it was actually Griselda who reacted first. Was already there, around the big seats and crouching in front of the huge, red, fuzzy thing, looking all buxom and chill. “Holla, holla, holla… Calm down, alright? She may be a Slayer on the other side, but here she’s one of us, okay? She’s part of the court. She’s not gonna hurt you, alright? I promise. You can come out…”

/Okay, wow? I guess some of them guessed?/ Buffy’s gaze caught briefly on Spike’s, shared the uncomfortable surmise. /I mean…/ It wasn’t like it was a tough puzzle, but if smart cookies like Gris had guessed, then how many…

“Wait… which Slayer?” Maria asked, confused and a little incredulous.

/Okay, not everyone./

_“The_ Slayer!” the monster shrieked, still huddled behind the chair and sounding like a teakettle. And okay, that high-pitched voice was totally weird coming from that huge body. “The one from _Sunnydale!_ The one who killed Glorificus, and the Master, and Angelus, and battled The First Evil, and…”

“Well, to be fair,” Buffy interrupted quietly, “I share the First Evil one, since Spike eventually shut him down. And technically I only _fought_ Glory. I think the body she was in died after she was down, somehow...”

“Actually, that was Rupert,” Spike interjected quietly, eyes flickering tensely from her to the quavering demon and back. “Didn’t want the bugger lettin’ her back into the dimension to start things up again.”

“Wait, _Giles_ killed Ben?”

His eyes found hers, quiet but plain-spoken. “Right ballsy thing for him to do, yeah?”

/Okay, Ripper!/

Their demon visitor broke in, glaring. “You killed my sister,” it spat. “And my uncle.”

Buffy jerked, taken aback at the venom. “Oh. I…” An acutely confusing mix of about twelve emotions flooded her system all at once, so fast she could barely parse it. “What… What did they do?”

That question seemed to power the creature right past terror and into fury. It shot frothing to its feet, Gris hanging onto one elbow. _“Do?_ Did any of us have to _DO_ _anything?_ They were just _walking!_ Just _walking!_ That was all it _took!” _

/No, that doesn’t…/ 

She would have snapped back, except… There were tears in the creature’s eyes. She probably would not have even noticed that, a year, two years ago, but… she had gotten pretty good by now at actually seeing tears in demon eyes. And this… was grief, turned to rage. But, just… this didn’t make any _sense_. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your relatives, really. But there had to have been _something_. It wasn’t like I just went in every night and tossed Willy’s bar looking for demons to kill. I never went after anyone unless there was a baby-killing ceremony or someone was burning down a building or they were attacking me. I wasn’t out to _get_ anyone…”

“Oh, yeah?” the demon demanded, and now it was struggling against Gris’ grip, lunging toward her. “Tell that to everything that doesn’t look human and dares cross a cemetery as a shortcut because we can’t cross town looking like we do! How _dare_ us walk aboveground instead of in the sewers like we belong, huh? How dare us come out even at _night_, how dare us even leave the house at _all?_ So then we see you and you see us and _obviously_ we must be up to something, right?”

/What? Did they really feel so… trapped? So beat-down just because I was _there?_/

“So yeah!” the demon went on, arms flailing outward. “We go armed in your towns. And we attack first, because Lohesh knows you’re gonna attack us if you see us with a sword or something; but if we _don’t_ wear one, we don’t have a _chance!”_ And all the sudden it slumped, face in hands. “Not that we do anyway. You always win. And we always die. And someone doesn’t come home that morning.”

Buffy reeled back against the nearest chair, gripped it hard to keep from falling. “I… If someone came at me with a sword, of course I was gonna…”

“Why did you even have to _come?”_ it demanded, glaring. “We were fine! We were _fine_, before you came!”

/Oh my God…/ “I didn’t ask for this either!” she heard herself snap, and it was almost as if she had left her body. “I am what I am! I got _dragged_ into this! I did the best I could. Do you think I _wanted_ to spend my nights killing things when I was just a kid? Do you think I _wanted_ to…”

Spike was there, had his hands on her shoulders. “Gris, could you please…”

No, wait. She should… say something. Get herself together. But her chest was heaving and she was… Something was breaking inside of her and she couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t think and…

“Hey. Listen. I don’t think this is gonna get solved tonight, _mijo_. C’mon. Let’s go get you something to eat. I promise, you’re safe here for now, alright? Let’s go. What do you like, huh?”

_“Eat?_ You think I can eat with _her_ here?”

A heavy sigh echoed through the dead-silent chamber. “Just c’mon, _cabron_…”

The demon was being steered out of the room, and Spike was saying something to Illyria. And then Buffy felt herself, too, being led away, but she honestly had no idea anymore what was happening, because she couldn’t think, and she couldn’t breathe, and her hands felt cold, and…

And then Spike was kneeling in front of her in some empty hallway somewhere, looking up into her eyes. “You’ve done _so_ much bloody good, Buffy. Never doubt it. Saved more lives than anyone could ever count. And if you didn’t fight when those buggers jumped on you, you’d be dead. And that’s just not allowed. Alright?”

She felt her breath coming back; hitching, trickling in in short, sobbing little gasps. “What… Should I have… Was there…”

“No. Listen. C’mon. You need to warm up. You’re in some sort of sodding shock; and no bloody wonder. All you’ve been through, and to have some tosser come throw it in your face like you were in the wrong, when you were just tryin’ to survive…”

She was shaking again, because what if… it was right? In so many of those fights, had she really been in any true danger? Maybe when she was younger, but by the last few years she had practically been bored by some of the daily battles, could have fought them with one eye closed, one hand behind her back, yawning and looking at her nails, and obviously she could have just knocked her attackers down and left them alive and gone on about her evening, and did she have to _kill_ them all?

/But I never questioned that I had to, did I? They were armed and they were demons, and no reason to wonder what they might be up to, because that was enough to know they should get a death sentence. But maybe if I’d memorized the books like Giles was always saying, I’d know which ones were likely to be baby-ceremony types and which ones might just have been walking-while-demon, and…/

“Sod this.” Spike had her up and was carrying her, and she realized distantly that she was shaking. That she was cold. That she had been… sitting on the hallway floor?

“Why are you carrying me?” Her voice sounded distant to herself, and a little faint. 

“Because you’re in fucking shock, Buffy. Because you’ve been a Christing child soldier and you’ve just now been faced with a buggering moral conundrum you didn’t ask for, and your entire identity is under assault, and for fucksake, let me carry you, just this sodding once, yeah?”

The rough tone wasn’t for her and she knew it. It was for the situation, and… she didn’t want to think, and she didn’t want to fight. She didn’t want to do anything right now. So she stilled. And somehow lost time, coming back from blankness with her head against his chest as he laid with her on their bed and brushed some hair out of her face. 

She wanted the blankness back. Wished she could sleep. 

How many times had she wished she could sleep to escape her life, her thoughts; even if there were dreams? Slayer dreams, horrible visions, something… It had been so nice here, without those. No pipeline to the Powers here, in this dimension, nothing to send her off out into the bushes to kill someone’s… “Did I do that, Spike?” she heard herself whisper. “Did I take as many as I saved? Did I kill… innocents?” /Am I a murderer?/

He pulled back a little, lifted her chin so that his gaze could drill deep into her eyes. “If any of us knew that, Buffy, we’d be God, yeah? You said it yourself; you did the best you could. You were a child, and then you were a tool. You got made into a sodding weapon, and you’re just now comin’ out the other side of that. And listen. Did you see me holdin’ back, ever, when I stood up with you?”

She let out a shaky breath, fighting for balance in a tilting world. “No, but… that’s different. When they’re fighting you, it’s all sport, right? Just a big cage-match? Demon-on-demon, everyone in it for the fun?” She felt herself shrink again, the world whirling. “Not like a cop, coming in with a gun to a knife fight, or… Or when you’re with me, it’s different too, because then you’re…”

“Stop it, Buffy. Listen. You did what you had to to survive. I won’t have you regrettin’ it, dammit!”

“But what if…”

“Sod this,” he said again, and yanked her hard into his chest. Wrapped his arms around her so tight she could barely breathe. “Fucking hell.”

He was rocking her against him, she realized distantly, and wow, she really felt remote. Kind of weirdly numb. Was this normal? She hadn’t felt this way since… Since Acathla. Since… “Spike, if you don’t do something right now to make me feel like I’m in my body, I think I’m going to… go away or something. I’ve done it before…”

A shuddering breath slid by her ear, and he bent his head. Lifted her chin again. “I’ve got you right here, Love,” he whispered, and kissed her very gently, almost chastely.

She dug her fingernails into his shoulders, delved deep into the kiss, because yes. This was something real. This… physical connection was a reason to stay here. Nothing else was real right now. Nothing else… mattered. 

He went with it, gave her what she needed; long and slow and deep, and breathed her until her sense of self stabilized. She did know one thing. /I know who I am here. Right now. I know who I am with you, because you don’t hate me. Somehow, you don’t./ She had done more harm to Spike than any other demon out there, more up close and personal damage; and here he was, holding her, looking at her like she was amazing, and…

“Love you so bloody much, Buffy. He was stroking her hair back, tones admiring. “We’ll get through this one too. I promise. I’m not goin’ anywhere. Alright?”

“Why?” she whispered, eyes on him. “How can you always look at me like that, when I’m…” She trailed off, the terror of it curling through her. The dread of what she was. Of what she had been, of what she could at any moment become.

“Oh, Christ,” he whispered, and brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “You keep workin’ on lovin’ yourself, pet,” he told her. “Till you can, I’ll hold the fort and I’ll bloody well do it for you, yeah? Till the end of soddin’ time.”

She closed her eyes and pressed her face back to his chest… and wished she knew how to cry. “Yeah,” she managed on a sound that might have been the tears she’d forgotten how to shed. “That’s you, Spike. Till the end of time. Probably after, too.”

“Not my bloody fault,” he answered, and cool fingers stroked up her neck. Soothed things she hadn’t realized were there. Slid into her hair… and she realized belatedly that he was humming that low, predator’s purr that he never actively used on her, ever… except now. Because the blood-bond, and because she needed it to sleep, and because, damn it, she probably should be really pissed off that he was manipulating her right now, but instead she was just… grateful. “Rest, Buffy. Everything’ll look better after a bit of sleep, yeah?”

“That’s… an unfair advantage,” she murmured, because her eyelids were seriously collapsing, and her overwhelmed brain was shutting off, and _god_ that was nice, and totally uncool… and also where had he been all those nights when she had desperately needed sleep and it just wouldn’t…

“I promise. Just this once. You need it, pet.”

“Mmm.” The last thing she remembered for a while was the feel of his hand, stroking down her back, and his voice, murmuring low and rumbly things to her. 

She thought she heard actual words, just once, before all thought vanished. “We’re all just doin’ the best we can, aren’t we, Love?”

***

Buffy really would have liked to have had a chance to meet with their new demon visitor, once she got her feet back under her. Face down its accusations and try to come to some sort of restitution, or at least make some kind of apology, if only for her own peace of mind. Get some closure. She never got the chance, though. Predictably, the critter rabbited before she even woke up the next morning, apparently too terrified of her to even sleep in the same hotel. Which, okay, was kind of depressing, but at least maybe it had had some sort of a meal first? 

And had had a chance to throw off her worldview, her identity, and completely wreck her life.

All the demon-girls were giving her a wide berth again, most of them were eyeing her really warily… and she knew that Spike and even Illyria were having to work extra hard to repair the damage, politically-speaking, so that she wouldn’t end up some kind of social pariah here in Beverly Hills. Luckily, most of the girls here had totally gotten used to her by now after two-and-a-half months of near-constant interaction, so after a couple of days of eyeing her askance they started acting more normal around her again. You know, when she didn’t seem disposed to start attacking everyone with her murderous Slayer-ness. 

Spike was also having to work double-time to keep her spirits up, she knew, which really wasn’t exactly fair considering he had other stuff to deal with right now, and she needed to pull out of this. Pull up her big-girl panties and deal. But it was hard not to hear that voice screeching in her head, see that terrified, accusing face glaring at her in her mind’s eye whenever she let herself still for a moment, and yeah. That whole interview had really shaken her. 

It was Griselda who actually turned the tide, though. The plump-faced, brunette demon-girl exited the kitchen one day with Cheeks, a new Tarahki they had just acquired from Century City; probably explaining the rationing system. “…And then you sign it out over here…” The two demons stopped dead when then almost ran into Buffy. A complex host of reactions slid over the green cheeks, through the red-orange eyes. “I think we’re getting kind of low on MREs, but we can still do the canned meats, right, Boss?”

A slow, warm sensation slid over Buffy, from her head to her heart and then down arms and toes. It warmed her for the first time since the run-in with the scarlet refugee the other day. ‘Boss’ meant Gris still considered her one of her leaders. It meant… she didn’t care what had happened in Buffy’s past. She was being judged solely on her actions here, in Hell-A, and nothing else, and that was… 

Buffy closed her eyes for a second, gratitude filling her to the point where tears threatened, and she just didn’t have time for that. She did have to clear her throat a little, though. “Ah, I think that’s where we’re at, yeah. You’d probably know better than me, Gris. You’re the resupply queen.”

Gris gave an easy shrug, cheeks dimpling, and wow. The viridian demon-girl really kind of looked like that ogre-chick from that ‘Shrek’ movie Dawn and the Potentials had loved so much, didn’t she? “You got another raid planned? Rinne says she’s ready to head out anytime.”

It was a message. Gris and her sister had talked, and both of them had decided they were still ready to back Buffy in the house. That was… “Oh. Um, yeah. We should probably do one soon, huh?”

“Low on some things.” 

“Okay, I’ll plan it out with the two of you. Get on that.”

“Tiny, you know, that new guy? The Loose-Skinned? He’s a good cook. We should get him in on it.”

“Oh, okay, great.” She was going to break down or something if she didn’t get out of here. Was this because of Spike playing politics for her, putting in a good word? Or had they just decided…

“Oh, yeah. Maria asked to be on the next raid too, if that’s cool.”

Buffy felt herself nodding like a toy. It was too much. “Okay,” she breathed. “I’ll go… plan something out. Thanks.”

She fled before she could embarrass herself. It took her about an hour alone upstairs to get herself together. 

Later that day, they did the raid. She even did it without Spike. And it was a little weird, but it came out fine. In fact, she and the girls became almost easy in one-another’s company again over the course of the five-plus-mile hike, being as they had denuded all food-and-potables resources closer to the hotel. They eventually found some foodstuffs in some stores they had not yet scavenged, even a few drinkables of the flavored-water variety, and spent half the day marching back without undue strain and enjoying something close to easy camaraderie. By the end Gris and Rinne were laughing and teasing each other about their sexual conquests past, present, and future, Esmerelda—aka Ms. Clean—was less stalking ahead all deadly… and Maria had stopped staring at Buffy like she was a mirage and was starting to ask curious questions, like, “So, um… how, um… long have you been a Slayer?” and, “So… this means it’s even… weirder than I thought for you and the Boss to, you know… be…”

/Understatement of the century./ “We get around it.”

Maria looked thoughtful as they headed up the drive to the Pink Palace. “You two must’ve had to work… really hard to make it work, huh?”

/Oh, honey. You have _no_ idea./ She could feel him waiting as they approached the lobby doors. It was like coming home. “If something’s good enough… If you need it enough and it’s right… then it’s worth the work.”

“Yeah,” spider-girl answered, eyes on Spike, and with a little sound, she dropped back behind Buffy. “I bet.” 

Well, that relationship hadn’t changed all that much. Nice to know.

The group trooped in with their spoils. Buffy halted at the door, drew even with her mate. Spike’s eyes, as she neared, begged the question. She sighed a little, lifted one shoulder, dropped it wearily. “We got some stuff.”

“Any trouble?”

“No.” /Thank God, since right now I’m not sure if I could kill anything without feeling like I was murdering someone’s auntie./

A comforting, familiar grip caught her hand, squeezed, and his eyes flickered to the Spikettes now vanishing through the inner doors of the lobby on a chorus of ‘All Bloody Hails’. “I meant with them.”

/Oh./ “No. I think… we’re good.”

“Brilliant.”

She lifted her gaze to his, suspicious. “Been campaigning for me?”

His lips turned up a little so that he looked faintly mischievous. “Didn’t need to. Bints know to stay on your good side, pet.”

He was being gentle… but he wanted her back. /Jeez./ “That makes me feel so much better.”

His hand disengaged from hers to slide up, and he slung his arm over her shoulders to turn her inside, out of the stifling heat. “Bein’ honest, I think a lot of ‘em actually like you.”

Buffy made a face. “It’d be a first.”

Azure eyes twinkled on her face. “Lot for a demon to like about you, Slayer.” It was the first time in a long time he’d called her that.

She sighed and went with it, rolling her eyes at him. “You’re just biased.”

“Feel free to bias me anytime.”

He was such a dope. 

She was so, so lucky he loved her. 

***

Month three also brought them a regular influx of tributary visits from Bro’os’ bat-creatures, come bearing human detritus picked up from the nomansland between their territories. The first time Drugas came sweeping in through the pervasive, civet pall of Hell-A with two wailing human passengers in tow had been shocking—for the passengers and for the court meant to receive them—but it had been a relief to know that their accidental negotiations had indeed borne fruit. 

Their new houseguests had required significant talking-down, of course, before they could be convinced that their having been snatched off the streets by a giant flying bat and delivered to a blue-eyed freak-woman and a vampire was actually a good thing. But then, they’d apparently already been through a lot before their recent escape from Century City’s clutches to dart around looking for a way out, so maybe they would have needed some time to themselves even without the aerial rescue. 

It wasn’t like the Beverly Hills contingent could do anything about the method anyway, and the overhead view had advantages with which Buffy and Spike simply couldn’t compete, so their guests would just have to survive it just like they had survived whatever the hell they had escaped in the CC.

Which… hopefully the refugees could recover their faculties enough to pass some of that intelligence on. You know, before they got themselves sent on to the Ash-Raiden-Lockley safehouse and sanitarium. Because these were the first survivors they’d ever gotten from Century City, and they badly needed to know something of what went on in that place.

“You know, what we really need is to find a way to use these bats of his to quarter the city for us and report back, instead of just bringing back traumatized people two by two, like we’re the Ark or something,” she told Spike late one titian “morning” as they sat out on their balcony surveying the empty lands to the northwest.

Spike shot her an interested look as he lifted his cigarette to his lips. “Interesting notion, pet. Not that it doesn’t help to have the thing bringing in extras, but maybe we can find a use for the bitty bats, yeah?” He took a thoughtful drag. “We should ask it next time if its infants are smart enough for that kind of work, since they’re too small for anything but recon anyway.”

“It would sure save us a lot of hassle,” Buffy agreed grimly. She had felt significantly less unsettled since they’d made their deal with the lord of Santa Monica; was even sleeping a little bit here and there. But the fact remained; as efficiency went, there were just too few hands and too much ground to cover. It was a numbers game, and when you considered that the areas that had been removed to Hell-A had included all of the greater metropolitan districts of LA and some of the surrounding, northern parts…

That was anywhere from four to nine million people, depending on how much of the city had come along, and no escape. Angel had apparently learned, via his dragon, that the whole damned city had been walled off somehow, which meant that whatever was beyond the verges of the place, survivable or no, there weren’t exactly any exits for the teeming masses of survivors. _“It’s a zoo,”_ Connor had told them by way of passing on the message, _“and we’re the exhibits. Except we’re all eating each other.”_

_“More like, we’re the sodding kibble,”_ Spike had answered grimly. 

Four to nine million people. And their little underground railroad had accounted for, oh… maybe a few thousand. Buffy supposed that probably a lot had died right off the bat, from thirst or starvation, or had promptly been consumed by some hungry or irascible demon who had just been lying in wait for one good day. Maybe at least half. But when you considered how many that still had to leave in the clutches of various demon lords, undergoing who knew what kind of tortures…

Who could sleep at night, thinking about that kind of thing? She wondered if Angel could, considering that if he hadn’t decided to challenge these Senior Partners of his with just a handful of ‘brawlers’… 

Well. That was neither here nor there at this point. _“Another drop in the bloody bucket,”_ as Spike had put it last night, _“when broodypants wants something to feel rotten about. And any road, we all signed on. He couldn’t’ve done it without us, so it’s on me as well.” _A wince from her vampire. _“I was the first bloody one to jump aboard.”_

_“That doesn’t make you culpable. You were just supporting an ally, and trusting the leader of your nest.” _Buffy had since had a great deal of time to contemplate, maybe even begin to understand the edges of what lay between Spike and Angel, and vampiric thinking when it came to things like nests and sires. And then there was that business where her guy had been desperately trying to find a worthy way to end himself, which…

Well. They had already been over that. No reason to retread that ground again. 

The whole team had been, from Spike’s account, kind of manipulated into signing on for this big battle of theirs, as a sort of a figurative way to thumb their noses at these Senior Partners, because Angel had been tired of treading water and being jerked around. But from what Spike had said, Angel had kind of gotten them stuck in that frustrating situation in the first place, which to Buffy sounded like a ‘you made your bed, now lie in it’ kind of deal. /I always thought of Spike as the impatient one, Angel. But then all the sudden after only a year you’re all, I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore’?/

One way or another, they were all here, along with the whole city. Millions of people were paying for an attempt not to free them from some hellgods’ rule, but simply to stick it to them in some kind of symbolic gesture, which sounded kind of like what Giles called ‘a pyrrhic victory’ in the first place; one gone really, really wrong and turned to a serious defeat. 

Whoever had signed on as support staff, it hadn’t been anyone’s idea but Angel’s. Thinking of all the people who had once lived here; thinking of what might have become of them… This time, Buffy wondered if her ex wasn’t wrong to suffer a little. Not that she hadn’t made a few bad mistakes in her time trying to do the right thing, and yes. She could definitely have empathy for that. ‘A lot of wrong bloody calls’, as Spike would put it. But _this_…

This had been a doozy. “You know,” she murmured, painfully pondering the nice homes they could see from their vantage. All empty, around here. All basically untouched. /My home, once. Where did they all _go?_/ “I used to live pretty close to here, as a kid. Maybe a little less fancy, but…” It wrenched her to think of it. Her old neighborhood. Her old high school. Her elementary school, her old neighbors, probably all…

“Yeah?” Spike glanced around them, out over the upsweep of land that marked the beginning of the West Hills. “Where was that then, luv?”

“Mid-City-ish. Technically Santa Monica I guess; sort of on the edge of Brentwood. Not quite in it—I mean, you know, no huge house or anything; we were in a condo—but close enough to be pretty secure.” She looked down at her hands, aware she was finally giving him something he had wanted but had never had, and wondering… would he like what he heard? “I had a nice childhood. Two parents, two cars. Ballet and gymnastics and skating lessons, trips to Crescent Bay Park in Venice or the Santa Monica pier every weekend...” /All gone./ “Dad would take me to the Ice Capades every time they came into town. One time he took me to see my favorite Olympic stars when they first went pro.” She knew he would hear the yearning on her voice, for that simpler time, couldn’t quite care at the moment. “‘Stars on Ice’. I wanted to _be_ Kristi Yamaguchi, or…” Her voice caught in her throat. /All gone. All of it./ Was already, she supposed—at least for her—and this was just the fullest expression of that loss, but…

“Buffy.” She could hear the pain in his voice; for her. For the quiet agony in her tones. Went on because she had to.

Because it was time he _knew_ her. “When Merrick first found me at Hemery, it was like my world came crashing down around me. I always _knew_ something was wrong. Off, behind all of it, but I’d been _so_ good at ignoring it all. Cheerleading and being a decent student and just… pretending I was so _normal_. Overdoing it, even, maybe.” 

She let out a breath in memoriam; because it had bothered her even then, as a young teen, that she had had to work so hard to play up the role she had chosen. That she had had to think about it. That she had had thoughts no one else seemed to have about herself, her relative place in the world… and a sense of unsettled yearning that had never quite dovetailed with her peaceful, standard existence in any way. “I got so good at pretending that I even _felt_ normal to myself, except… Deep inside, I could never quite believe it. I was too good at everything athletic, and sometimes I was just too strong, had crazy reflexes… Had these dreams, sometimes…” 

Her eyes cut up to Spike’s intensely interested gaze. Jerked away again, toward the perfect little deserted homes under their cast of aureate light, like the faintest hint of creeping blood. “Merrick, telling me about the world underneath everything—about vampires and demons—it was like I was right all along. That there had always been something wrong with me. From the start. I wasn’t crazy.” She shrugged. “Or maybe I was. My parents seemed to think I was.” She honestly couldn’t remember if he knew this part, it was all such a haze, what had happened with the needle-stick. Who knew and who didn’t. “After I faced Lothos they had me locked up for a while…”

His entire being tightened. “In the asylum, was it?”

/Oh, right. You didn’t get to hear about that./ “It wasn’t their fault,” she defended with a quick glance at him and aware how much he had loved her mother. “I’d just burned down my school gym. I was ‘a troubled kid’.” She tried to shrug it off. “I lied after a while. Pretended I’d made it all up. But after Lothos killed Merrick it all kind of vanished from my life. And then the divorce happened, and I was so afraid of screwing up again that…” She sighed heavily. “I guess I just thought… Maybe I _was_ crazy. Maybe it was all just a bad dream. I’d half-convinced myself. I definitely hoped that was it, that it was all over. And by the time I got to Sunnydale I was almost sure of it.”

“Except deep inside you knew it wasn’t. Because your blood was still singin’ it to you.”

It came out in a whisper. “Yeah. And then Giles was there; like this great big signpost. ‘You will never escape your destiny’. And I found out about the Master. That I was on a hellmouth.” She could hear the tremor as it entered her voice. Couldn’t help it… and honestly, she didn’t bother to care. She could be raw with Spike, now; again. “That it was all starting over, and I’d never get away. And I blamed them. The vampires and the demons. _You_.” Time she admitted it. “For all of it. For the dreams. For my problems at school. For disrupting my life. My parents’ divorce.” She picked a little at the cover of the chaise. “For making me less than normal. Making me separate and different and forcing me to never fit in again.” Her voice dropped to a near-whisper. “For existing at all, and ruining my life. It wasn’t me, you see,” she told him earnestly, eyes on his and begging him to understand. “I couldn’t see it that way yet. That it was just something _in_ me, something I couldn’t get away from. I thought that if I could just kill enough evil things, make the darkness go away and leave me alone… Maybe I could just go back to normal.”

He let out a long breath, a little smoke exiting out onto the still orange air, and nodded. “But it never went away, did it pet?” And sapphire eyes turned on her, penetrating. “You just kept fighting and fighting and it kept wearing you down till you didn’t even recognize yourself.”

He understood her too damned well. It was almost frightening; or would be, if she didn’t so badly need him to _get_ it. Get her. 

Him, of all people. “Sometimes, when you would look into me, I would see everything that I was afraid I was becoming. Because you were too close to human for comfort.” She smiled a little at him, to take the sting out. “You know, it would’ve been easier if you were like Angelus. Then I could’ve just staked you. Easy evil. But no; you had to have all those _feelings_, and show love and fair play and compassion, and be all confusing, so that I had to get all twisted up in my mind and make huge, sweeping, screwed up assumptions about an entire species, just so I could write you off.”

He grinned at that, clearly pleased. “I aim to disappoint, luv.”

There was a short lull in the conversation, then. A healing one, maybe, but certainly one pregnant with new understandings and realizations. When he spoke again, it was with the tone of a person who had had a longstanding curiosity satisfied. “That’s why you adopt all the strays, innit? Because you see yourself in them? The defenseless little buggers who have no idea which way’s up?”

“I _was_ them, once,” Buffy agreed, watching him quietly, and then made a twisted sort of little moue. “I guess… if I ever realized you _needed_ me…”

“Bugger that.” He flicked away his cigarette. “I was never defenseless. I may have had a muzzle on me, but I was still a right monster.”

She smiled then, aware that was what he had been shooting for. “You were. A terrible, fierce monster. When Wil put that spell on us, I remember thinking, ‘God, he’s such a _beast_. I _love_ that about him!”

“Yeah?” he asked, grinning, and reached out to tug her over from her chaise to his. She went willingly, slid one leg over astride his lap. “And now?”

“I still think you’re a beast.” Answered his leer with a sideways smirk of her own, and dipped till her hair fell all around him like a curtain. She knew he loved it when they were like this; in the tent of her hair, with the light shining through it. Got the confirmation of it when he reached up to finger the locks, delighted and entranced at the way the russet light glinted off the strands. She slid her arms around his shoulders, bent her head. “You’re just a little bit more domesticated now.”

“Barely housebroken,” he protested, but mostly for form’s sake than anything. There was no bite to it anymore. And he made no demur when she dropped her mouth to his. 

They made out for a while in a leisurely way while the pervasive, unchanging light of Hell-A closed about them, as it ever did. This time, though, the undifferentiated morning felt a little more like hope, and the slow, unhurried touches did not require the goal of distraction. They could lie together on the chaise, on their deck; look out into the vog of the bizarrely-altered city, and pray that maybe they might find a way to ease the pressure of need. Put paid to the cries for help. 

And finally put some of their demons to rest.

***

“Lord Bro’os says that I am to be at your disposal. If you wish my young to do this thing for you, then it will be done.”

“Well, that’s great.” Buffy nodded decisively at her fellow champion, and hoped she sounded convincing. “Tell Lord Bro’os we appreciate the vote of confidence.”

The bat-thing’s high, reedy voice turned resentful. “We are not to eat the humans we bring.” 

“Also a useful instruction,” she answered in a slightly drier tone, and fought not to heft the axe she held tightly in one hand. 

Times like this, she really, really missed the Scythe. Just on principle.

“I will go now, and inform my young of this new request. When we have sighted any packs of humans too large to be transported to you by my wings, I will dispatch a pup to you with word.”

“I appreciate it.”

Her only answer was a huge, fetid downdraft as the smelly, fuzzy thing sort of fell off the roof of the Pink Palace and beat heavily away through the endless salmon pall to the southwest.

Coming up behind her, Spike laid a light, congratulatory hand at the small of her back. “You’re quite the diplomat, luv.”

/Hm. Yeah. That’s me. Majorly diplomatic not to cut off demon appendages to get them to cooperate./ “Took a few years, but I’ve learned to curb my urge to just whack off heads.” Hefting the axe once more, she watched the dark torus disappear in the distance before loosing her grip. Finally, once she could no longer see the giant, bat-like demon, she lowered it with a sigh and caught her lover’s eye with the corners of her own. “Do you think it’ll work?”

“Remains to be seen, Buffy, but it’s a damn sight better than just wandering around the wreckage hoping we land on the right spot by trial and error.”

She agreed with that much. “I’m not much for waiting around for news before I can act, though,” she pointed out grimly as they turned back toward the fire escape door.

“So I’d noticed.” His smile was fond, though, as he ducked unnecessarily below the lintel, into the welcome dark and relative cool of the little shelter. “Weren’t you always telling me, though, that I needed to be a better planner? Less impulsive and all that rot, and that I’m better off waitin’ for intel before I go off half-cocked?”

She smiled herself in response to his gentle needling. “Remember all that stuff I said about you being a mirror for me?”

His eyes remained on her back as she stepped in front of him to head down the stairs. “Yeah, I remember, pet.”

“Well, let’s just say if I hadn’t learned that lesson early on I might still be living here in LA; and I definitely wouldn’t have my first set of bite-marks on my neck.”

They had made it back down to approximately halfway between the third and the second floor, which was where they halted, Spike’s expression twisting in disgust. “Buffy, old Batface never gave you a chance to do anything else, no doubt, impulsive or no. He would’ve known you were green. Probably used your inexperience to…”

He never got to finish. Maria interrupted their little rehash of past indiscretions at a gallop, completely out of breath. “Throne room! The Azure Queen! New captive from Century City…”

They exchanged alarmed glances, and broke into a dead run together; one that swiftly left their messenger behind.

There were two possibilities. Either the ‘new captive’ was human, which meant it was a fifty-fifty whether Illyria was even coherent right now, much less the refugee… or they were a fuzzy, friendly demon. In which case it was cowering in front of a sternly-chastising Old One right now, getting a fresh case of whatever passed for PTSD in demons. 

Neither was of the good if they wanted the 411 about what was going down over in the CC. Because their last couple of refugees had never talked. They’d gone on from the Pink Palace yesterday, a complete mess. One of them had been half-catatonic still, the other apparently too traumatized to ever talk again. 

Luckily for the safehouse contingent, they’d acquired quite a few mental health professionals and doctors out of their sea of refugees, which helped with all the trauma counseling all those people needed over there. Especially with the kids who had survived the early days, and especially lately, as more and more of the survivors were escaping from god alone knew what tortures. 

None of whom were kids, by the way. At least not so far. Which Buffy didn’t even want to think about, because either the kids were all being kept… somewhere, for something, or…

Well, she had run into a lot of demons over the years who liked nice, tender baby to snack on. Which was just…

/How much of an army can we mount, really? If we wanted to take over just a little territory, like the CC, or WeHo?/

Of course, that would screw up the whole cover story they had going with the rescues and all that, and blow up their entire political situation. But. Just, _god!_

They skidded into the Crystal Ballroom side-by-side to find Illyria holding court rather magnificently that day. The gauzy, bronze curtain was half up around the big ball of unused lights that hung over the ‘thrones’, giving backing to the dais and highlighting her form with a sort of russet halo that offset her ultramarine coloring and leather armor. Cowering before her was a seriously anxious-looking Ano-Movic with wounds literally all over her, who appeared to be shaking so hard she was stuttering as she answered whatever question Illyria had asked before they’d entered. “N…no, Your E…Excellency. H…he s…said nothing ab…bout your realm. He j…just wants t…to use his magicks on…”

“His magicks, you say? Can you identify to us his demon type?”

“A Sh…Shroud-D…Demon, Y...Your…”

Beside Buffy, Spike groaned heavily. “Oh, bollocks.”

“Bad?” she asked in an undertone.

He didn’t bother to answer, just jerked his chin at the ongoing interview.

“And he used his magicks on you how, precisely? Be accurate in your account.”

The Ano-Movic girl trembled harder. Gestured shakily to her body. “I… Th…this was all d…done without… any w…weapons, or…”

“So he enjoys using his powers to inflict pain.”

“W…well, this was j…just me, Your E…Excellency. He… did other th…things to other…” A swallowing sound. “He s…said he was looking f…for the overlap between s…science and the arc…cane arts…”

“Interesting. You may go, small one. Our people will administer to you healing and sustenance appropriate to your breed.”

Relief appeared to flood the Ano-Movic’s entire being, though it was tough to tell, coloring-wise. At the very least, everything in her expression and posture relaxed as she sort of curtsied and fled. She almost barreled through Spike and Buffy as she exited the throne room in her haste to escape the terrifying Old One’s watchful eye. Probably she barely even noticed them.

“Well,” Spike opined as they reversed her path into the room, “that was right informative.”

“Indeed.” Illyria sounded about as interested as if she had heard an account of paint drying. 

Buffy eyed them both, wondering on one hand just what the hell it would take to get the blue woman’s blood pressure up, and on the other what was so ‘interesting’ that it would make Spike get all uneasy like that. “So,” she prodded pointedly, “anyone want to let me in on the deets about this ‘Shroud Demon’ thing?”

“They’re mages,” Spike answered succinctly before Illyria could jump in with anything too technical. “Can pull out dark magicks Red would have killed to even touch, without hardly liftin’ a finger; but you don’t wanna brass ‘em off. They can call up a storm by twitchin’ their nails about; make people desperate, make ‘em off themselves, make ‘em keel right over. Make a man’s blood boil in his veins by raisin’ an eyebrow. Bloody dangerous, Shroud Demons.”

A shiver ran up her spine. “They sound… lovely.”

“Buggerin’ awful to have as enemies, for sure.” He was grim enough in his answer that she knew he was definitely reassessing the strength of their western neighbor. 

“So then… why do you think he’s so small? Why hasn’t he taken more territory?”

He crossed his arms and shrugged, shooting Illyria a quick, curious glance. “Biding his time, maybe? More interested in other amusements?”

“Perhaps he is intimidated by the rumors of my presence,” Illyria suggested without undue modesty.

“Could be,” Spike allowed. “Playin’ it low key till he can suss out whether you’re really it or not…”

“What do Shroud Demons look like?” Buffy found herself asking of no one in particular. “Not that it really matters, but we don’t have a good library for this stuff here, and I always work better when I put a name to a face.”

Spike nodded a little, if in a distracted sort of way. “Wear turbans, mostly. Keep their faces covered. Lot of times you only see their eyes. Penetrating, cold eyes, yeah?” He made a face and lit up a cigarette very abruptly, took a too-fast drag, and if he wanted to look self-assured about the subject to anyone else, he was plain as an open book to her. The realization that their nearest neighbor was this mage thing really was giving him a case of nerves. “Lots of robes and that; like they walked out of _‘A Thousand and One Nights’_.” An exhale through a cloud of uncertain smoke. “Think they are a kind of djinn, actually…” Another glance at Illyria, as if seeking confirmation.

“A distant relation,” Illyria agreed blandly. 

/Turbans and…/ Buffy frowned, a memory arising in tune to the description. “Kind of tall and terrifying with the aura and all that? Real forbidding?”

Her question caught Spike’s attention, and he lowered the cigarette to eye her with no small measure of surprise. “Yeah, usually.”

“Then I think I’ve seen one. Tall, blue, kind of shadowy face?” Spike’s startled expression turned amazed at her next words. “Giles was friends with one, or at least one owed him a debt. He had some mage or something that looked like that come pretend to remove Angel’s curse back when we were screwing around with Faith and the Mayor…” At Spike’s sharp look, she shrugged. “You were gone. It’s a long story. Short version; Faith’s always been good at trying to steal the guys I’ve slept with.”

Spike grunted and flicked his ashes over toward the nearest dead, potted plant as if looking for something to do with his hands. Wow, he really wasn’t a fan of these Shroud guys, which was interesting, because the one Giles knew hadn’t seemed super… 

Well, he’d had _presence_, sure, but… “Anyway, the turban-guy waved his hands around, did a light show, Angel did his act, she bought it. Then he told Giles that his showing up at all ‘settled the debt between them’, and that he didn’t want to be ‘called on’ again. Like, ever.”

That seemed to thoroughly impress Spike. “Hm. Watcher must really have some serious mojo in his past if he was owed a favor by a Shroud-Demon.” 

This would get him. “Well, actually, what he said was he introduced the guy to his wife.”

The cigarette fell to Spike’s side as he goggled at her in disbelief. “Bollocks.”

“It’s true.”

Sapphire eyes regarded her with a twinkle of near-amazement. “Bloody hell, Rupert,” he muttered to the air in a half-admiring tone. “That’s got to be one helluva story.”

“Indeed, if this Watcher caused a Shroud Demon to enslave his magicks in the service of humans, and to the works of a Slayer, then he has great skill. I should like to meet this one; especially if he was the Rupert Giles Wes mentioned to…” Illyria abruptly shuddered once. Again. 

And then very suddenly sagged in her throne, shaking like someone in a seizure. 

When she stilled, she was Fred again. “Wes?” she asked, sounding broken. “Where’s Wes?”

“Oh, bloody, buggering hell,” Spike groaned, and jumped away to go take care of his cracked co-ruler.

***  
  
  
  
  
  
So, I know, a lot of things happening in this segment, but that kind of sets the tone for the rest of the tale. Things crack-a-lackin' along...


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, got behind again. My bad. Was sick as a dog.   
Anyhoo... another long one here, because if I broke it at the first set of stars, it'd be uber short, with almost no action/intrigue... and if I'd realized how uneven that stuff was while writing it... 
> 
> LOL, I probably wouldn't have done it any differently, because it just came out however the hell it came out. But, I do apologize that this stuff keeps breaking down into longer-than-10k segments. It was not my intention.
> 
> Didn't quite borrow dialogue from some of the comics here, but mentioned them obliquely in a conversation with Spuffy because I wanted to fix a conversation between them in certain future comics that went badly and which screwed them up by addressing it now.

**S:  
  
**

“You need to be more careful.”

Spike eyed Angel Jr. with no small measure of mordant humor. Nice to hear advice on how to have a care in hell from a boy who…

Well, he supposed this one had had his share of experience in the matter. But still.“Yeah? Why’s that lad?” he managed with a little less jaundice in his tone than he would have credited were it earlier in the day, and went back to his studious wood-shaving project with a show of serious indifference.

Wouldn’t do to look like he cared. Not yet.

Connor humped up, looking a bit frustrated. “Because Angel… My father…”

The burnt sienna light filtering in through the lobby doors made the youngster look like a pumpkin, with his Dutch-boy haircut and his great, round face. “Know who he is. Known him a damn sight longer than you have.” /I was even raised by the bleeding great git, after a fashion, which is more than can be said of you, for better or worse./ He shot a short glance up at the kid. /And you’re starting to look a bit like him. Anyone ever tell you that? Or at least you act like him. Does you no favors to inherit the genetics of a soddin’ ponce…/ Though he supposed he’d had his own inheritance to overcome in that realm, to start, and he’d done alright.

Give the lad a hundred years to season and maybe he’d even get past his genes.

“Okay, but listen! He says that you’re really pissing off the other demon lords, with all the human captives you’re taking from them. That he overheard from one of Burge’s sons that they’re talking about banding together to come after you and what’s-her-name; the girl with the funny name who’s your Champion now. That the only reason they haven’t yet is…”

“Her name is Buffy, lad,” Spike managed levelly… though he did pause in his carving. “And keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak of her, or you’ll be wearin’ it around your neck like a Welsh Not.”

Connor didn’t even flinch at this, just forged on in an exasperated manner. Which Spike supposed made sense for a lad who, one, probably had no more clue as to the reference than Buffy would, and two, had been raised in the supposed worst of the worst of all demon dimensions and taught to be a vamp-fighter from infancy and all. Probably he’d had a bloody rough childhood. “…Because they don’t _know,”_ he insisted sharply, “at least not yet, that you’re having problems with Illyria; and she’s all that’s stopping them. He says if they ever found out that she’s…”

“What? Glitching?” Now exasperated himself, Spike tossed the blade and the stake down on the empty concierge desk and shot an irritated glance at the boy. “What; dear old dad didn’t want to come tell me that his own self? Thought he should make _you_ his messenger boy?”

Connor made a bit of a confused face. “No. I mean, I don’t know. He said something about feeling unwelcome over here right now. Said since I was over here a lot anyway picking up strays, that maybe I could pass on the word.”

Spike grunted and pondered returning to his self-appointed task. Not that he really needed stakes so much here in this dimension—or hadn’t, really, thus far—but with all the rumors spreading right now as to the activities of a certain Charles Gunn… Well. Best to be ready in case there was ever trouble to come from that quarter. 

Not that he wouldn’t hate like hell to stake someone he’d sodding fought beside, but… There it was. “Yeah. Expect he’s not feeling all that open door about our place right now, at that,” he agreed, and picked up the knife.

This apparently piqued the kid’s student-age curiosity no end. “Why is that? I mean, you and Angel spent all that time fighting at each other’s sides. You’ve been buddies for a hundred years…”

“Oi!” Spike’s head shot up, and he pointed with the stake he’d just retrieved. “You take that back, you! At best I tolerate your old man. Companions in battle is a bit of a stretch. ‘Buddies’ is _right_ out!”

“Huh. You seemed pretty buddy-buddy to me when I visited over there, and based on what Lorne…”

“Thought wrong.” Turning back to his whittling, Spike did his best to resume a devil-may-care posture in his seat. Leaned back against the glossy wood railing that lined the desk and shot the kid a glance from under his scarred brow, wondering if there was anything else. “So. Your poofter of a father send us any other bitty messages? Have anything to pass on to us from down in Clover Park? Or you ready to pick up the latest shipment of friendlies and head out?”

Connor looked a bit butthurt. “What _is_ it with you and him, anyway?”

/Oh, that would be a long list, boyo. A _long_ bloody list./ “Not gonna tell you,” he answered shortly. “Keepin’ today PG for the little ‘uns.” 

That closed the little bugger’s face right up. “Oh, ‘cause I’m so innocent.” His eyes darted up, as if looking through the floor. “And what’s with what’s-her-name, too? Because every time I ever mention my father, she gets all…”

“Not gonna tell you again what her name is. Start wearin’ it out, or I’ll wear you out.”

That earned him a snort that told Spike he really, really needed to teach the kid to respect his elders. Maybe a nice one-on-one thrashing with a Master vampire. /A _real_ one. Not that your da ever earned that title with any especial exploits, point of fact, save for just from hangin’ about long enough bein’ a bigger bastard than most./ It hadn’t occurred to him as a fledgling, but his grandsire had never taken on anyone who was greater than him. In fact, he had more often than not turned the other way when number one had been threatened. It had taken the soul and a mission to change that. Before… Well, even when their ladies had been snapped up under their noses he’d backed off from the sodding Immortal. His victims had always been culled from the weak, and he’d called Spike a fool more than once for biting off more than he could chew with his fascination with Slayers. 

It was a revelation to recognize, after all these decades, that he, Spike, might have done more to earn his reputation as ‘master’ than the vampire who had spent his entire fledgehood telling him he was less-than, or barely adequate. 

“I mean, but _‘Buffy’_, though. What kind of name even _is_ that, anyway?”

That brought Spike to his feet. “Hey,” he exclaimed, transfixing the little shit with a pointed finger. /You little pissant! Do. Not. Mock. The Buffy./ “She didn’t choose it, but it fits her all the same, yeah? She’s surmounted it, made it hers. It’s a name strikes fear into the hearts of demons and nasties all over the world, now, no matter what _you_ might think of it, so I’d step back a bit, were I you.”

Connor made a doubtful face. “It’s just kind of hard to take seriously as the name of a demon-lord’s Champion.” His expression turned to something slightly more curious. “Is she really some kind of super-Slayer? Like Faith, but, I dunno. More?”

Spike snorted and set down the stake for the second time. Nasty things anyway, stakes. “Lad, she’s the one, the only, the original. Faith only wishes she was as tough. I know that bird, and yeah. She’s been on her own magic carpet ride, but Buffy’s seen and done things Faith couldn’t bloody imagine if you handed her the videotape. Died twice, even, and still comes back swingin’ every time, tough as balls and rarin’ to go.”

Connor leaned back a bit on his heels, looking interested. “You know, it’s weird. You get the same look on your face when you talk about her as my father does. All nostalgic and admiring.” He frowned then. “Except he gets all twisted up afterwards and tosses something down on a desk, or gets all sharp and starts cutting people off and changes the subject.”

Spike smirked inwardly. “Yeah, well… you win some, you lose some.” Rolling his tongue, he set aside the cutting tool.

His remark earned him a confused look. “What do you mean?”

/Oh hell./ “Nothin’, Junior,” he answered shortly. “Not somethin’ you need to know about. Grown-up business.”

He must’ve let something slide, though, to betray himself, either in his face or voice, or maybe his demeanor as he moved to rise, for Connor stared at him for a long moment before speaking again, hesitantly. “Before, um… Angel was with… Cordelia, was he…”

Spike continued his slow turn away, to keep his expression hidden. “Was he what, kid?” he asked roughly, the impulses warring within him. _‘Thou shalt not uncover thy father’ nakedness_’ jousted with the ever-popular, _‘If you can score one over on Angel, for Chrissake sake, do it!’, _which went rounds with, _‘It’s not the kid’s fault. He’s not involved. Keep him out of it.’ _And yeah; technically the first proscription had been more about not sleeping with one’s father’s wife… Though he supposed regularly and enthusiastically shagging your sire’s ex and one true love counted. But hey, _vampire._ Treading on the dark side and all that rot. Still, the passage had always spoken volumes to him when it came to asking for pillow talk about one’s ‘father’s’ weaknesses. He’d never done it with Buffy—honestly he never wanted to know what had passed between them in those moments, any road. Bloody _hell_ no!—and for sure it meant avoiding any subsequent dissemination of that information to the wider world. 

Especially when it came to dirtying up a father’s relationship with a son when they’d had fuck-all time to get things right between them. He did have some compassion in his undead heart. Not his place to get in the middle of _that_ hot mess, chum the water by stirring his own issues with Angelus into the mix. Best to keep out of it. 

His fight was between himself and Angel. Always had been, even as the twisted bromance they had had from the start had been complicated by competition and wrangling, and jealousy, and a multipartite love. His need for a father-figure, or an older brother; a male role-model… and Angelus’ willingness to exploit that—exploit Spike’s desperation for acceptance—for his own gains, even as he had enjoyed and reveled in Spike’s male company. And…

And none of it, including their mutual, oft-times twisted love for Buffy Anne Summers, was any of Conner’s bloody damned business. “Listen, Junior. You want to ask your old man about Buffy, you ask him yourself. It’s not my bloody call to fill you in on soddin’ past history, yeah?”

Connor backed off without moving a muscle, looking offended at his harsh tones. “I don’t need the snark. I just thought, since he won’t talk about it…” A glare from Spike set him straight on that, and he looked sullenly away. “Yeah, well. You’ve basically confirmed it for me anyway.”

/Oh, bloody hell. Way to go, acting like a wee fool over it./ 

“Anyway…” Connor shrugged and lifted his head suddenly, eyes blazing. “I get Cordy. She was amazing. But what does this Buffy girl have that makes everyone so in love with her, anyway?”

Spike snorted at that. “I didn’t know Cordelia much, lad, so I can’t speak to that. The chit had spunk and a gift for satire. About all I caught from her. Don’t remember much else. But Buffy…” With a sigh, he leaned back a bit against the hardwood railing, let the relative chill of the glass countertop seep into his palms. “You want me to compose you a sodding sonnet, or just tell you you’d have to talk with her more to know? Because I’m a shite poet, and I’ve never been able to do her justice.” /No matter how many bleeding times I’ve tried; and I _have_ composed her a sonnet./ Pulling out a tattered Morley, he lit up with swift economy of motion and relaxed a bit as he pulled in a drag. Let the smoke out with some relief as the faint unease brought on by the unwonted conversation slipped away a stage or two. “You can’t sum up Buffy Summers in ten words or less. It’d take a whole bleeding novel.”

“Oh yeah?” Buffy stepped down off the high, curving staircase and into the lobby, looking from one to the other of them with interest. “I always thought I was pretty simple. Fight demons. Kill the nasty ones.” She crossed the long lobby to move closer to Spike, clearly aware of the way his gaze, as ever, riveted itself on her the moment she entered any room; because she was the cote to the dove of his undead heart, the burning center of his own person galaxy, with the weight of gravity pulling him in like the tides, the… “Sometimes end up loving the slightly edgier ones, if they’re really nice to me,” she finished, drawing to within a foot or so of his space.

He sank to the black hole of her eyes and, as always, was lost.

“Uh, so…” Connor’s voice broke the tableau, and shook Spike up a little since he’d nearly bloody forgotten the blasted irritant was even in the damned room. “Is that what happened with, um, my dad?”

Buffy’s eyes jerked away from his so fast that it left Spike dizzy; spinning in the cosmos without center. “What?” 

And then her gaze shot back to Spike’s. When it lit, it was more than a little accusing.

/Fuck./ “Don’t look at me. He’s a perceptive little shit.”

She sighed and dropped her face into the palm of one hand.

“Sorry, luv.” He meant it, but what could he do at this point? Cat out of the bag and all that rubbish.

“I guess it was bound to come out, now we’re all living cozy together in hell,” she muttered into her palm, and sighed again as she lifted her lovely mug out of her hand to shoot the kid a glare. Her hands dropped to her hips, and she took on that no-nonsense Buffy tone Spike so admired; the one that made him, ah… kind of want, just a bit, to find a reason to earn himself a bit of lecturing. Just on the side, like.

Maybe later, though. 

“Listen, Conner. That was… a really, really long time ago. Your father is… important to me. But we’re friends. Allies. And that’s all. Okay?”

“But…”

“A really, _really_ long time ago. As in, another life. As in, I’ve literally _died_ since then. And he’s been with Cordelia. And had you. And lived a whole other existence in a whole other city, and no, I’m not going to talk about this with you.”

“But you were…”

She shook her head, refusing to give details. “You want more, you ask your father. Because we are so not having this conversation.”

“Okay, but…”

Buffy shot Spike an exasperated look. “If we ever get out of here, maybe we should introduce him to Dawn.”

Spike almost swallowed his tongue at that. “Oh, bloody Christ, Buffy, why double the fun? You wanna get us all killed?” He shot the irritating lad a jaundiced glance, imagining the carnage. Bodies everywhere. Broken windows. The amount of _chasing_ he’d have to do. Stolen motorbikes… Demon kidnappings… Christ; he’d have to work with his ponce of a grandsire full-bloody-time just reining them in. Fucking _god_ no. “Besides; the boy’s already seeing lightning-bird, innit?”

“Who’s Dawn?” Connor demanded, sounding thoroughly thrown off-kilter by now.

“Yeah,” Buffy agreed, sounding a bit philosophical, and lowered her hands to her sides. “Besides, Angel would kill us if we did. Entangling his son with another Summers woman…”

Spike knew his eyes had warmed at that. His hand shot out in spite of himself to catch her by the waist, and he grinned at her shiver. He’d forgotten how relatively chilled his palms must have gotten on the cool glass counter. “Best thing in the world, Summers women.” But upon second thought… He shot a quick glance over his shoulder at the irritated and confused kid standing behind them. Made a face. “He’s nowhere near good enough for our Niblet, though.”

“Well.” Buffy shrugged. “You wanted to get her away from the thricewise…”

He heard himself growl before he could stop it rising. “Now you mention it, if the choice is between Junior here and a bloody mollusk…”

“Listen, I don’t know who you’re trying to set me up with, but I’m with Gwen, and I…”

Spike was more or less done with this conversation, honestly. “Mind your manners before your elders, lad. And anyway, piss off. Don’t you have a shipment to take to the safehouse?”

“Spike, be nice.”

Connor shook his head as he circled around them to head toward the Cabana Café out by the ex-pool, where the latest group of refugees had been gathered amongst the pillars for their upcoming trek. “No wonder Angel doesn’t like you, Spike. You’re kind of a jerk.”

“Ta, Junior.”

The kid departed out through the pillared, circular sitting area toward the back quadrangle without another word. They watched him go for a moment before Buffy turned back to Spike and slugged him lightly, square in the chest. 

He’d rather expected it, so he didn’t flinch, nor did he ask what it was for. He wasn’t that much of an idiot. He did, however, “Ow!” reflexively and rub there, hunching in a bit to protect the goods. Not that she hadn’t pulled the punch. He’d felt heavier strikes from her when they’d been feinting about as foreplay. “Look, I’m that sorry, luv. Only, he started grilling me on it, and I tried to keep mum, but he must’ve got something from the things I didn’t say, and…”

With a groan, Buffy gave in and moved closer to lay a soothing hand over the spot she’d sort-of, kind-of struck. Made a half-irritated, half-regretful face. Kissed him there as if she’d made a boo-boo—cute, since she’d hurt him about as much as if she’d swatted a fly—and then moved into his arms and wrapped hers around him. Pressed her heart against the exact spot and sighed heavily. “You’re about as bad at this as you are at hiding bodies.”

“Oi. It’s not my fault that the bloody current had to take it into its head to…”

“And I’m apparently still just as bad when it comes to taking things out on you when I’m upset.”

/Oh, for…/ He put her away from him to lower his head, glare into her eyes. “Just sodding stop that. You think that little love-tap even counts? Because it…”

“May not have hurt, but intent still matters.” Her eyes, staring deep into his, were very suddenly wells of remorse, and Christ, would she ever get past the ways in which she had hurt him in the past to service her own pain?

He supposed it was a lot to ask, though, since he was never going to get past what he’d done to her that one bloody awful night, and he didn’t think he ever should. “Oh, bloody hell.” Pulling her back into his arms, he took his own turn at a sigh and wrapped her up tight. “We’re a right pair, aren’t we.”

It wasn’t a question.

“But we’re here.”

His hand rose to stroke her hair. “Yeah. We are. And that’s sayin’ more than I ever thought possible.” So much so that his heart sang over it every time he saw her come near, and… “Just… Don’t ever give up on us, yeah? Because I need us to keep tryin’ at this, or I’ll bloody well fall apart.” 

“I don’t know. You were strong enough to stay away before. I came right back the minute I heard…” She turned her face into his throat, whispered, “I think you want this to be healthy, and I’m hoping I can just _have_ it. What if I still have more growing to do, and I can’t…”

His fingers caught her chin. Lifted her face to meet his. “You listen to me, Buffy. I stayed away because I was too much of a bleedin’ coward to come to you. That was all about it. Nothing else to it at all. Alright? So don’t tell me…”

“Okay, but…” Her eyes were anxious on his. “What if I baked too soon, and I’m not good for you? What if I’m still just hard, and I can’t be soft and warm enough to… do this right?”

“What if you what?” It took him a moment, but he finally found it. The antecedent. “Is this that bloody cookie thing?” he demanded, feeling like he’d solved a complex mystery, or climbed sodding Everest or something.

She looked away, clearly embarrassed. 

“Oh, hell. Leave it to you, Slayer.”

“Okay,” she hit back, as defensive as he had ever heard her to be. “We can’t all be literary geniuses, or whatever. I make do with the analogies I come up with in the moment, and cookie dough worked for me.” And her eyes jerked away once more. “I wasn’t… done yet, with you, before. I was lumpy and I kept falling through. I melted and couldn’t hold my own weight when you needed me, and so you kept finding sharp nuts that hurt you; or I was burnt all uneven whenever I tried to cook too soon, or…” She shot him a sharp look. “Stop laughing!”

“Sorry pet. Sorry. I can’t help…” He couldn’t. She was being so sodding serious, and he just… Couldn’t. He was a goner. Down. Falling to the nearest chair; a plump, mint-green thing, pulling her resisting body with him so that she fell, taut with growing ire, to his lap while he dissolved into helpless chuckles against the dusty upholstery. “Sodding… fucking… Christ…” he gasped, wiping tears from his eyes with one braceleted, beringed paw, still too-near giggling and damn near undone. “Oh, buggering fuck, Buffy, I love everything about you.”

She stilled very suddenly in her struggles, her head turning sharply to stare at him. “You what?”

If he’d been human he’d be gasping for breath right now. Instead he just laid back, head tilted far along the low, wooden rim of the chair to watch her with now-solemn appreciation. “You’re just the utter fucking One. Without any doubt. Do you know that? Do you have any clue?” He shook his head slowly and pulled her in closer. “Sodding cookies. I’d eat you alive, either way. Have done. Raw, cooked, burnt. Christing crumbs. Fuck-all, Slayer; I’ve begged for morsels along the way and been proud to do it, would be proud just to watch you bake from afar without a single sodding thing to do with it. So you go on. Do whatever you need to do. Just so long as I get to be there, in some shape or form, yeah?” He had sobered completely, eyes on hers with absolute commitment. “If I don’t serve for a time—or if ever I don’t—don’t doubt. I’m still not going anywhere. I’ll be there for you, one hundred percent. No matter the cost. Only… just don’t ever cast me aside. Because I’ll be the one to burn to ash, then.” Saw the pain in her eyes at the mere suggestion, knew he had that much of a promise from her without the need to ask. Made the request anyway, for his own heart’s sake. “All I ask is I get to see what you become on the other side.”

She stared at him for a long moment, as if seeking something; then slowly lowered her skull until her forehead rested on his. “You mean that, don’t you?”

“I do.” He’d never meant anything more.

She stilled for a time, so that he could barely tell if she was breathing. All he heard were the faintest wisps of oxygen running through her at very long intervals… and her heart. Slowed now, steady; pulsing along at a rate that said she was calm. Prepared for something. 

When she spoke, he knew some decision had been come to. Braced himself in case… /Whatever happens, what we’ve had; here, and there. In that last year, and; Christ. Even before… It’ll all have been worth _everything_. _Anything_…/

“I want this to work. More than anything I’ve ever… God, Spike. I _really_ want this. Forever. If you want to… put up with me. It doesn’t seem fair to ask it, but…”

/Oh, Christ. _Fair_, is it?/ That she was even _asking _was ironic as hell. 

He caught her arms in his hands. Held her away from him again. “I’m here as long as you want me here,” he informed her firmly, and let his intense tones leave no doubt as to his commitment. As if she should ever think otherwise, at this bloody point in the game. “Whatever else happens. Fair doesn’t enter into it. I’ve lived sodding long enough to know that all that matters in life is what you choose, and I chose you a long fucking time ago, yeah? And you know that to me it’s a miracle that you’re here at all. That you put up with yours truly. So you let me worry about the rest.” He lifted one hand then, ran it up under the edges of hair going long, drying from the endless heat and lack of haircare products. Still the loveliest thing he had ever laid eyes on, for all that. “I’m _here_, Buffy; and I’m going _nowhere_. So you learn. You grow. I’ll go on doin’ the same. And I’ll only leave if you tell me I’m no longer serving you by staying.” He smiled then, into her eyes. “Even then you know I’ll only be a shout away, because God knows you can’t be rid of me. You’re in my blood. I’m in your DNA.”

He thought he felt her tremble as she nodded. Closed her eyes… and then she had her face in his neck and her arms around him. He buried his own face in her shoulder, under her hair, and just breathed in her scent. The smell of her _here_; a special scent he’d come to quantify as _his_ Buffy. No perfumes, no shampoos, no detergents. Just her, and effort, and dust, and the faint whiff of his bite underlying everything. Weariness, sleeplessness, stress, a lingering leftover of sex, and _them_. Raw and different and naked and utterly special, and, just… Christ! Why would she think he would ever give her up—in a million fucking years—after this, unless she quite literally kicked him out of the door and barred it against him?

They remained that way for some timeless moment, and then, “You know, I actually came down to ask him if there was any news, not to get all Dawson about relationship stuff…”

He choked a little at this description. “If that makes me Pacey, I’ll dust meself right here…”

She lifted her eyes to regard him with a faint smile, as if admiring his grasp of pop culture. “Not anymore.” And sat back in his lap to eye him with a slightly more businesslike air. “What’s the news, William Pratt? Anything new?”

“Oh, yeah, you know.” He waved one hand about around her head, bracelets tinkling like to call the fae to the table. “We’re right brassing off all the local demon lords, the way we’re nicking all their slaves. Guess it’s eating into the food supply or summat.”

“Oh. That’s great.” She looked marginally concerned. “He say anything about any attacks or whatever? Incoming hostiles?”

Spike shrugged, unconcerned. “Right now we’re still in a good spot, so long as the cat’s still in the bag about out friendly neighborhood Smurf.” Which, now that he thought about it, could be a troubling hitch in the works. “So I s’pose we’re fine as long as all our people stay loyal and word doesn’t get out with any of the bitty demons we’re protecting, or…”

Buffy groaned a little and turned in his lap to lean back against him, clearly very suddenly weary. “So, we’re on a countdown to war, then.”

“Yeah,” he conceded. “Probably.”

“Well… It’s about time, I guess. We’ve had a really nice, long vacation. How long has it been?”

He smirked into her lovely, smooth neck, and admired the gorgeous line of her jugular, the sweet sweep of her carotid. The perfect mark of his mate-bite just there; beautifully placed and so artistically-done that it almost looked like a tattoo next to the ragged scars on the other side of her. Knew she’d lain this way against him so that he could admire it, smell it if he’d wanted, to calm them both. An offering.

It had become a bit of a thing, between them. “Depends,” he whispered, and drew his fingertips lightly up along the roughened ridges of skin. They were scarcely visible, save in light such as this, though he’d had her any number of times since the first; yet one could easily feel them with the lightest touch. His nail-polish had worn off in fighting, and they’d long since run out of the bottles they’d scrounged, so his remaining shreds of smooth coating were rough, stripped, and the texture of them, as they bobbled up and down over the tiny knots of scar and unmarred flesh made her shiver. “Do we count the days as the dimension gives ‘em…” Twenty-six or something of those incredibly long circuits since they’d landed here; twenty-two and change of them spent almost constantly in one-another’s presence. Eleven times, he’d had her here, now, and six below. Three in each thigh, and Christ, to think he might have ever had this pleasure, this connection, with his Slayer—with _Buffy_—was…

His fingers pressed lightly, just there, at the center of the bite, because he couldn’t help it. Felt her arch a little, up and away from him to press in closer to his fingers. And slid his other hand down to her belly; quietly resting in invitation at the brink of her. Played his fingertips against her navel in a teasing little tattoo he couldn’t help. Felt her breath let out in a small gasp at the suggestive thrum of it. “Or try to figure it out based on how long it is for them back home?” Probably close on to three times that. Seventy-five days or more, and only two weeks of that apart… Touched her lightly with just the tip of his tongue, and heard her breathing escalate, her heartbeat race to a gallop, caught the light, come-hither scent as it broke out on her flesh… and sodding hell. She had always been so easy for him; easy to his touch, before. But now, with the bond, it was like she melted before the merest brush of his fingers. Didn’t even have to come close to her quim for her to open those flaming, pleading eyes; no more denial anymore, no more cold or warning fires. Just welcome, and want, and… /Christ./

“Long enough,” she whispered back, gaze turning back to his now, “that I’m starting to forget that I ever thought we couldn’t do the make love not war thing…” Her voice was a husky whisper in her throat, against his lips and fingertips.

“Mmmm. Best get as much of the first one in before the second one starts up, yeah?”

She was already turning. “We’re gonna miss the bed again,” she informed him, like she was just letting him know, as a courtesy.

“Sodding shocking.” He grinned as she descended to meet his invitation.

They made exactly as far as the stairs. But he was a gentleman. At least… most of the time, anymore. So he very gentlemanly took the brunt of the action.

There were times when he sorely missed his fucking duster, yeah?

Buffy could get a bit… enthusiastic when he played with that scar.

***

**B:**  
  
Their war came sooner than either of them expected, unfortunately. Two dimensional days after Connor’s last visit, and they were suiting up for a nice, demon-y confrontation. But heck. At least that had given them the equivalent of a week’s breathing room (well, about six days, anyway) before they’d had to really gear up and get down with the 411.

They would have thought they would have to move against Century City… which would have been a hell of a task, since Buffy remembered the last Shroud Demon being all levitate-y and teleport-y and able to shoot lightning from his fingers like Gwen Raiden on acid. Not to mention his reputation for ‘scientifically’ magicking wounds onto people and stuff. 

But Century City didn’t move on them. 

WeHo did. Apparently he found himself less afraid of a rumored Old One than Shroudy. That, or Shroudy felt like he had plenty of territory to cover in the direction of Santa Monica—i.e., away from them—while WeHo was kind of sandwiched between them and that sing-songy guy Lorne over in Silver Lake. Also, the inordinately powerful Burge guy Downtown was coming up from the southeast to threaten basically everyone, Burbank was right above his head coming south from beyond Griffith Park whenever she wasn’t tussling with Sherman Oaks, and maybe he just thought they’d be the easiest to pick off.

Or maybe he was just the hungriest, since he seemed to need to suck out human brains telepathically to get his fix, like a mental vamp. Hard to get voluntary donors for that, like Spike could with blood. ‘Hey. Share me some of your choicer agonizing memories and we’ll call it good, okay? Dredge up your worst fears and pain and live with that so I can have a full brain-tummy.’ 

/Yeah. No thanks, horny./ People didn’t really work that way. And god knew there was enough suffering going around the human camp by far to feed the jerk, so he’d probably turned into kind of a glutton lately. And they, with their whole ‘saving people and herding them away to a hidden location’ deal, were cutting into his mental food supply. So.

Invasion from the east it was. At least according to the latest refugee to cross their floor; a terrified runaway demon functionary from WeHo’s court who had escaped to throw himself on their mercy about two hours ago. He was still laying on his spiky Brachen face in the throne room, shaking from the boots up, even though his ‘audience’ with a restored Illyria had ended twenty minutes before. Spike and Buffy had tried to convince him to go get a snack—or, in Spike’s case, a good stiff drink—and some shut-eye, but he was still too busy laying there muttering about the end of the world and freaking out about whether his ex-boss had read his mind and was aware of his defection. 

Apparently the DL of WeHo—whose name, incidentally, was Kurg—didn’t take kindly to betrayal. Buffy kind of had the feeling they wouldn’t be seeing Brachen-boy for a while. Maybe till after the upcoming festivities. He was highly likely to spend the next week or so down some very deep hole, nibbling on his horny, teal fingernails.

They’d discussed the matter with Illyria, post-interview, and really, there was only one plan that made sense. Hit first. Pick their ground. After all; it wasn’t like the hotel was super defensible. Not very siege-worthy. But if maybe they went on the offensive, tried to hit Kurg first, from the inside…

It was shaky, though. They’d picked the Brachen’s brain like woah for details, but the fact remained…

Hella shaky plan.

“I need Betta George,” Spike grumbled as they suited up for the upcoming confrontation. “I’m sure we can handle whatever army he throws our way, considering his size; but if this thing’s a telepath he could incapacitate one or all of us, depending on his strength and range. The leadership, the soldiers…” 

An unhappy prospect. /No wonder he’s not scared to take us on./

“…We could sure use one of our own to fight back. I know I don’t want anything rummaging around in my gourd looking for old landmines to trigger…”

/Yeah. Obviously we have plenty in there to set off./ Like, didn’t everyone here by now? But when you stirred in a hundred-plus years of living—a lot of it under Angelus’ thumb—for one of them, and a formative era spent on the battlefield that was the world’s most active hellmouth for the other, you upped the ante considerably. Buffy shuddered at the thought as she pulled on the fingerless gloves she’d picked up from somewhere. “Who’s this George guy, anyway?”

Spike shot her a sideways glance as he settled a dark, long-lapelled button-down across his shoulders and tugged at it to settle the fit right over his dark plum tee with the rip over one nipple (which, as a side-note; yum). “Gonna sound a bit odd, ducks, but he is what he sounds like. Basically a big guppy.”

Arrested mid-preparation, Buffy turned to him and stared. “A… telepathic fish?”

“Well, he’s about the size of a small whale, and he floats about midair. Breathes it too; but yeah.”

/Alrighty-then./ Adjusting the collar of her own slightly more purplish blouse, she shook her head at the image. “Did I ever tell you demons are weird?”

He smirked with lifted brow as he tugged up a jean jacket and tossed it lightly over one shoulder. “Might have done, a time or two. But variety is the spice of life.” He nodded at her, biting his lip suggestively. “Need any help there, luv?”

She swung her own matching jacket onto her shoulders, shoved her arms in. “I’m still deciding if it’s too small or too big. It’s tight in all the wrong places, loose in other ones. But I like that it feels like it’ll protect my kidneys.” 

Spike moved closer to adjust the fit across her shoulders. Tugged up a little, across the back, at her elbows, swept her sides. Settled it in a little, so that it felt a lot more on point. “There. All better.” Stepped back to survey the results. “Not as tailored as your usual fare, but it works.” Tilted his head at her, eyes looking askance. “Sure we could find you a leather one down there somewhere, if you want.”

She looked away a little, feeling kind of foolish, and busied herself with adjusting the collar of the jacket. “No, this is okay. Besides; if I wore leather I’d kind of feel like I was cheating on you or something.”

That took him very clearly aback. “How’s that, then?”

She lifted her eyes solemnly to meet his curious ones. “Well… you don’t have your duster here… or at least, we haven’t had time to go on a raid to go get it at your apartment…”

“Too much of a bloody risk for a coat.” They’d been over it once or twice. His old place was too close to the epicenter of Burge’s territory, for one.

“Yeah, well.” She made a face, thinking of how naked he always looked without the long, leather jacket. He had to miss his second skin far more than she missed seeing it on him, not that he’d brought it up, even to complain. Honestly, the omission itself seemed suspect now that she thought of it. “It just seems rude to wear one when you don’t have yours. Like we should… I dunno. Match.” She shrugged a little, feeling wrong-footed, but... “And I dunno; I kind of think I used to do that unconsciously. Wear things that matched you, whenever I went into a fight with a Big Bad. Or when I was feeling worried, or if I wasn’t sure I was gonna make it.” A tiny, self-conscious smile. “Like armor, you know? Because you’re one of the strongest people I know. The only one close to as strong as me, so if I could _wear_ you… maybe I could be twice as strong…”

She could tell he was floored by the way he went still, watching her with those uber-expressive eyes. “Bloody Hell. I’d noticed you’d started to wear… some things like that, Buffy, but I thought…” He shook his head, looked down at the hat he’d grabbed for her, held crunched down in his hands. The black beanie; the one he would have known she’d want, to protect her hair from goo and whatever, and to keep it out of her eyes. “But. Hell. Just because I don’t have my duster doesn’t mean you shouldn’t wear what feels right…” She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him look quite so undone.

She smiled then, and lifted her hand to his cheek. “I’ll be fine.” Tugged his face down a little so she could inspect him. “Eyeliner’s good.”

“Yeah? Not smudged? Wouldn’t do to go into battle lookin’ less than…” He hooked his fingers, beanie dangling from his half-closed hand, and did a theatrical ‘grr argh’. “Got to look the part to feel it.”

Sometimes he bowled her over, he was so damned adorable. How had she never realized that ninety percent of his Big Bad look was cover for the gigantic marshmallow he was inside? /Ohmyjeez, you beautiful dork./ “You look the part,” she assured him solemnly. “Very edgy.”

He straightened to eye her suspiciously, and had he caught the tiny smile in her voice? She had kept her face totally straight. “This is serious. Don’t you laugh at me or I’ll have to drink your blood.”

“Now, that’s a serious threat, you big bad vampire, you.”

“I’m not kidding. Dammit, Buffy…”

“I’m not laughing.” She caught his eye, smiled. Touched his cheek briefly once more. “We all armor up our own way.” And she had just realized that this? All this? Was what he did when he didn’t have his duster, because he felt naked without it. “I think you’re beautiful when you go to war. Like a dangerous work of art.” /This way _or_ that way./

“Oh. Well then.” He relaxed, and his smirk came back. “Ta, luv. Same goes.” And he handed her the hat. “Speaking of; you ready to go make a preemptive strike?”

She frowned at that, wondering now whether there might be another way. “Well, if you want this telepathic fish-demon of yours, we can always go try to get _him_ first.”

Spike looked thoroughly taken aback, though he seemed grateful enough for her support. “Doubt we have time, pet. We don’t even know where Gunn’s holed up. Mid-City somewhere, or maybe even down in Inglewood. Who even bleedin’ knows…”

She met his eyes solemnly. “We need numbers. We’re shy of real offensive tools and we both know it. We’re just gambling that Illyria will stay all blue in the face of a big demon-y guy like this Kurg, but who knows how many humans will be around to trip her back to Fred.” It went without saying that if that happened she would go from superweapon to huge liability. They would have to completely halt the attack to protect her, maybe smuggle her out before Kurg killed her since putting an Old One down would be far more than a notch to brag about to the other DLs.

It would be nothing less than a total victory for him. And, losing her—as figurehead and as a real power—would be more than a disaster for them. It would spell utter ruin for their little principality, and for everyone Illyria’s reputation currently protected. “We need some weight to swing so we’re not put out of commission too; especially since we don’t know how many minds this Kurg guy can affect at once…”

“We don’t even bloody know his _species_,” Spike interrupted sardonically. His eyes on hers were searching, interested.

She returned the look stolidly. “And to my mind, attacking a nest of vamps is a comparatively soft target. How many times have we done it?”

That brought up a flicker of a wry smile. “Loads.”

“And still here to tell it. Might even be mostly fledges, if Gunn’s turning ‘em to make an army, since it’s not like we’ve seen a ton of other vamps in this dimension…”

Clearly he hadn’t thought of that, judging by his startled expression. “Easy work for you and me,” he murmured. 

/Definitely./ Fledges were all stupid impulse, no matter how much training they might have gotten from these captive Slayers. Who, by the way, couldn’t have imparted all that much beyond what came from instinct, since she could remember no one who was on the books down here in LA. “Totally. And we’d draw the strength we need. We’d free up whatever Slayers he’s using to train his vamps so we can plug them in on our WeHo offensive.” Trained or not, they’d certainly be battle-hardened by that point. And, freed by her and Spike, they’d owe Beverly Hills their total allegiance. 

“We _are_ pretty spare,” Spike agreed grimly. It was clear he was turning over the interim step in his mind. No doubt he was trying to decide if the possible payout was worth the gamble of the delay.

“I just think we’d do better going up against even an unknown number of vamps than against we don’t even know what nextdoor, with barely any intel.” She shot him a smile. “Total familiar ground; and then when we hit the Big Bad, we’ll have backup.”

She knew she had a good point. Knew he knew it too. Besides; they had no idea when WeHo was going to attack. Their whole gig was to attack first before he could. But if they could get some better ammunition first… 

“Only hole in your plan, Buffy, is how to find them before we run out of time?”

It was. But she had a possible plug for that hole, too. “Maybe the bat-babies can find him for us? I mean, it’d be a lot faster than quartering the whole city, and for all know they can smell vamps, since they can clearly smell humans.” She managed a tight half-shrug. “Maybe even Slayers smell different…”

That earned her a snort of mild derision. “Only if you know what you’re sniffin’ for. Doubt they do, pet, since they’re not vamps.” At her raised brow he grunted. “You’re not their primary predator, yeah? _I_ can smell you…”

Her acknowledging quarter-of-a-smile was probably only partially amused, mostly regretful.

“Exciting,” he reminded her quietly.

“Uhuh. To thrillseekers.”

“What’re you trying to say?”

“Never mind. So, what do you think? I know the timeframe is tight, but…”

He considered it. Clicked his tongue, tilted his head. “If it takes more than a day to do the little side-trip, we go back to the main event, you think?”

She nodded agreement. “Probably can’t spend much more time on it than that.” And frowned. “Our days, not dimension-days, right?” It was always worth clarification in this place.

“Yeah. I doubt it’ll take three of our days for WeHo to move. Don’t wanna be gone when he does.”

/Yeah. Unfortunately we never seem to be the ones allowed to skip the big battle./ Just once she would like take that day off. Hang out on Maui or something. She smiled sadly at him as she picked up the axe. “Ready to go against the long odds again?”

“‘Once more unto the breach’, and all that rot,” he agreed jauntily. At least, she was pretty sure that was agreement.

“Sure. What you said.”

He shot her an incredulous glance as he reached for the weapons bag. “Don’t they even teach _Shakespeare_ in school anymore? What _do_ they bloody teach?”

“Oh. Was that Shakespeare? I know ‘To be or not to be’ and ‘…wherefore art thou Romeo…’”

“Bleedin’ Christ. Right. We get through this one; _‘Henry the Fifth’_. Add that to the reading list, Slayer. You’ll like it. I soddin’ promise you.” 

She wrinkled up her nose and swung the axe impatiently, convinced his little ‘make Buffy read the Classics’ obsession was bound to fail. “If I _understand_ it. I had a hard enough time with that one sonnet you tried to talk me through… which I’m still not convinced was a love poem, by the way…”

“Oh, you’ll understand it,” he growled, “if I have to translate every other bloody word for you. And then we’ll find some poetry you’ll buy into. Maybe cummings, or Yeats…” Jerking open a drawer in the dresser, he grabbed up a couple of stakes she had never seen before and started jamming them into the weapons bag, muttering to himself about wars and education and poets, and something about Bethlehem, which, sure. 

She smiled at his back, bemused and feeling more than a little fond at his offended movements. You’d think she had insulted a relative of his or something. “Hey, Spike. Even if I never understand what the books say, I love _you_.”

He didn’t turn around. But his mutters tuned down to low, slow grumbles as he went on packing the bag.

Sometimes he could be really, honestly… cute. Which was a word she would never have thought she could ever have applied to a leather-bedecked, blood-rimmed vampire named ‘Spike’ who had at one point gone through Europe as part of a humanoid plague variously called ‘the Scourge’ and ‘the Whirlwind’, slaughtering every third person he met and all that stuff. But, okay. Sometimes he just did things that were stupidly cuddly and adorable. 

It was frustratingly confusing, even to this day. “You don’t make sense, you know that?”

“Hmm?” Lapis eyes cut over to question her with half of his attention, the other half caught up in a weapons inventory.

“Nothing. C’mon. Time to use our…” It was laughable, but so apropos she just _had_ to. “…Bat-signal.”

That earned her a way-too-tolerant glance. “Only in hell is that acceptable, yeah? I generally expect a much higher standard of quipping from you, Slayer.”

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist. I mean, it was just _laying_ there unused.” 

He grunted dismissively. “Hopefully our wing’ed friends actually do come when called.”

/Right?/ 

The bat-signal o’hell was actually a scent-marker that Bro’os had given them, in a big pot carried by Drugas, with instructions to use it when they needed to make a connection with the Champion of Santa Monica and his get. _‘This is how I call them in,’_ the note tacked to the jug had stated_. ‘Just dab some on a flag or something and fly it high enough to catch the wind, and they’ll track it back to you within an hour.’_

It stank to high heaven, but apparently to carrion-loving bat-demons it was utterly irresistible. Or at least, per advertising. They hadn’t bothered to use it yet, since thus far Drugas and his kiddos had come in faithfully almost every day—i.e. two, three times per dimensional day—with a refugee or two and word of some gaggle or other of human flotsam hiding out in Crenshaw or South Park or Mid-Wilshire seeking asylum. The safehouse people had had to expand to a new set of warehouses to handle the added influx in the not-quite-month since their accidental invite to Bro’os’ seaside palace. 

Once they gained the roof Buffy stood on one of the big, industrial air conditioners and ran down the California State flag, whereupon Spike wordlessly grabbed one dusty white corner, wrapped it around his hand—no use dirtying yourself up with something gross when water was so scarce here—and then, only then, took one for the team and dug into the jar she’d put off opening till that moment. 

They both held their breath while he did so, and rubbed the thick, greasy, brownish-black crap all over as much of the pennant as it would cover. Then, with a, “Faugh!” Spike wiped his residue-free fingers on a clean portion of the giant hank of cloth, sniffed his hand, winced, and nodded to her to reel the much-heavier drape back up to the top of its pole. It hung there, limp in the complete lack of breeze and weighed down by its greasy cargo, which seemed unpromising from a ‘carry scents across the miles’ aspect, but hey. They’d done what they could do, right?”

“Sanitizer?” she offered, and held out one of the little bottles they now carried everywhere. It never hurt to be expedient when you spent half your life up to your neck in gore and guts. Especially since, as far as they had been able to figure it, the water wasn’t coming back anytime soon. Either the city had been uprooted from the aquifer, or the aquifer had come with them but the water in it had been replaced with sludge. Buffy was no scientist, and didn’t get why, if the ‘outgoing’ went where it should, the incoming didn’t also do its thing the right way. However, one of the more recent refugees had been a civil engineer of some kind in her previous life, and told them that whatever had brought them there or disconnected them from the rest of the Los Angeles metropolitan area had somehow unplugged them from a very carefully-balanced system. _“Most of LA is pressure-fed freshwater from the aquifer,”_ she’d informed them grimly. _“There’s a lot of talk about moving to de-sal processors that would run on oceanic pressure, but those cost big infrastructure bucks. In the meantime, we’re obviously still getting a helluva lot of pressure from somewhere, but unfortunately that also means any water in the treatment tanks is gonna be contaminated with that swampy crap. I think we’re SOL.”_

What it all boiled down to was that this was LA’s worst drought since ever. Everything that could be filtered or boiled for drinking had long since been, and all the nearby stores had been raided. Even the bottled water was seriously running out. Scavenging that necessity was becoming an essential part of their raiding trips, at least on the return journeys. Meanwhile, as bathing went the hotel pools and spas and the nearby fountains had finally been used up, and now they were running through the water from the tanks in the unused toilets of the hotel for cleanup while they hunted through the yards of nearby McMansions for pool water to filter; water which, at this point, was severely questionable. Unfortunately, most homes around here had switched to heating coils instead of hot water heaters, since the area was pretty ritzy. LA drought ordinances had effectively robbed them of even that resource.

Luckily, and with a book they had scavenged from the local library, Ms. Clean, the sisters, and Maria had used the now-defunct Nikken as a model and begun hunting around for charcoal and rocks and various other debris to build a filter in a huge fifty gallon drum to clean the stuff, make it potable. After all, they were also low on burnables like propane and Stern-o from the camping and catering stores, which kind of put distilling off the table. It was becoming kind of a tossup for everyone what was more important; warming the food, or boiling the ‘water’ just to be safe.

In any case, at some point, they were going to run out of even those questionable sources, between evaporation and general sludginess. 

In hopes of relieving the stress, one of their recently-acquired demons was making noises about setting up a party to head to one of the reservoirs nearest to them, up in the hills, to see if they could rig up some kind of ‘wet gold delivery system’. Protecting which enterprise would take a big time-out from their rescue missions… but be seriously great for barter, and was it insane that Buffy was becoming such a doomsday prepper here in this dimension? She had always thought those people were crazy nutjob militia types, but right now? Honestly, they could use more randos with those skills. But all those types all tended to live a lot further out than LA. Like… Death Valley. Which was, as far as they could tell, still located in the real world. 

From what they could determine, only metropolitan Los Angeles had been transported to hell. Which had a certain poetry to it, she supposed. Or at least it seemed to, based on what she remembered from her short sojourn on these mean streets, but… it also seemed like kind of insult to injury. 

And none of the people here knew how to get along without grocery stores. Herself included. A lot of this brought back some pretty terrible memories of looting deserted Sunnydale to feed her unexpected burden of voracious teen Potentials—and that, back then, had but capitalized on the trauma of her having come so close to starving, with Dawn, during those months post-resurrection—and, well… At least Sunnydale had only had to feed herself and her girls and the few remaining Scooby support staff, by the end. Hell; they’d been incredibly lucky that the hospital had remained in service till near the end, and that the power had remained on so that they had been able to keep Spike from starving, since god knew all the butcher shops in town had gone dark long before it had turned into craterville. 

Here, though, in a city that had had most of its fresh produce imported up from Mexico, its dry goods in from outside the borders… Everything was long since vanished or gone bad or scavenged already by someone, and you had to go pretty far afield to find sustenance. The fact that their little contingent were doing so well really had more to do with having acquired a hotel full of supplies than anything. The people who hadn’t been so lucky…

Well. They probably hadn’t been so lucky. Though, granted, maybe in the long run it was a nicer way to go, dying of thirst in three days, than to get eaten or end up as some demon lord’s sex toy. Which, well… Was a lot less fun for some people than it was for her. 

/Though when you really get down to it, in my case it’s just as much the demon lord who’s _my_ sex toy as the other way around./ 

/Of course, if this water shortage keeps up for too much longer, I’m not having any more sex no matter who’s driving. It’ll just get too oogy./ Now that the water from the hotel’s vast pool was no longer a useful bathing option, things were getting a little tight in that department. In the last week they had gone from sparing sponge-baths and really cutting down on the amount of water they used to rinse toothbrushes and stuff like that to more serious curtailing. Of late the denizens of the hotel were, as a group, effectively running through all the hotel’s linens using them as makeshift towels—the towels themselves had long since all been soiled—which in turn were converted into a quick wipe-down system. You dampened them as much as you could get away with. Hit the hot zones. Which, you know, were self-explanatory, unless you went out and got all gooey in a fight, in which case you got a slightly larger water-ration for cleanup.

It kind of had everyone on edge. Only the essentials, at this point. A lot of canned food. Nothing you had to boil or add water to. You changed into new clothes a lot, raided from Rodeo Drive, since you couldn’t wash them. The laundry rooms of the hotel were stacked to the ceiling with dirty stuff; towels and sheets and torn-up, blood- and venom-soaked clothes and used underwear…

And she was seriously starting to feel self-conscious about one of Spike’s favorite activities in bed, despite the fact that he repeatedly told her to stop worrying about it, that modern notions of hygiene meant that she was probably cleaner by far than many of the women he’d been around for much of his existence, and that if you could _literally_ eat people who had sponged-bathed maybe a couple times a month, or even sometimes bathed once or twice a year, for a hundred _years_, you weren’t going to be thrown by a minor lack of deodorant or perfumed soaps. 

It didn’t make her feel any better. Which put a crimp in his style, and he was really starting to pay a lot more attention to Tiny’s burgeoning plans for fetching water down from the closest sources. Not that he didn’t want to ensure everyone who didn’t live on blood had something to drink, but she kind of thought he had other ulterior motives, too.

She had agreed to be a little more of a joiner last ‘night’, had ventured out to play poker with him and his ‘Spikettes’. It was a way to kill time here in Hell when they didn’t have much else to do. And yes, they all needed the stress relief, and yes Spike had seemed happy to teach her; not to mention to enjoy the amusement factor of watching her and her glass face give everything away. But. She kind of thought he knew she was maybe putting him off a little because she was self-conscious about the sexytimes right now.

At least his very serious efforts to teach her to bluff were hilarious to the girls, who tended to fall over laughing every time she failed to have anything like a poker face. By the end of the extremely long-running game, Gris had told her point blank, “Ai, you’re great with an axe, but don’t quit your day job, _mami_.” 

Watching Spike’s current dissatisfied expression, Buffy kind of thought this sort of thing also counted as a motivator. He was spending a lot of time sniffing at his hand with a highly unsatisfied air as he sat beside her and rubbed the sanitizer into his palm. The whole performance led her to believe that whatever residue had seeped through the flag was seriously offending his vampire olfactory system; possibly far more than any BO she might be putting off, which was, she supposed, at least good to know. He gave it up after a while though, with a grunt of irritation, and sort of rubbed the hand in the gravel of the roof as if it could wash the scent away.

They sat back and waited, companionably side-by-side and eyes to the coral sky. “How long do you think we should give it?” she queried after about, oh, maybe forty-five quiet minutes. It no longer weirded her out in the slightest how easy it was to sit silently in his company, just breathing—or not breathing—the same air. She had always felt so unbelievably comfortable with him around that it had literally defied her capacity to communicate the reasons to her fore-brain. Fighting beside him? Toss him a weapon, or pass him an enemy, secure in the knowledge that he had her back. Fighting against him? Every blow, every kick, coming effortless and smooth and like water; without effort, secure in the knowledge that she was fighting the swiftest, deadliest opponent she had ever had to face one-on-one and reveling in the economy and the challenge of it. 

Sitting on her porch at Revello while the world came crashing down? Nothing else had ever seemed more natural than to sit beside him; her oddly tractable frenemy. And, like everything else with him, he had taken incomprehensibly less work, less thought, less mental gymnastics by a million degrees than anyone else—even her closest companions—when it came to handling the closeness of him. To opening up; about her mother’s illness, her fears about the CT scan; just all of it. She had even told him things it had never occurred to her to tell Riley, and he had been her _boyfriend_. 

After the silence. Because it was just…

Instinct. 

Spike, for her, had always been about gut instinct. One way or another. And that had always been bizarrely comforting. 

It was her thoughts that had always gotten in the way. Gotten them into trouble. /You always did think too much when it came to him. You should have just kept rolling with the lizard brain. Like coming here—or, you know, _there_ here—to find him when you heard. Or trusting him with Dawn. Trusting him with Dawn again, even after… what happened, when you found out about the soul, even though you knew he was still raw, a little cray-cray...

/Or giving in to the inevitable in the first damn place./ Her eyes fell upon him, awed by the ultimate results of instinct in their lives. /It’s never _not_ worked with us./

Thinking, not so much.

As she watched him, Spike leaned back onto his hands, stretching a little, and his face twisted as if irritated by the wait. “Teeth said an hour. If they’re not coming in for a landing in an hour and a quarter, my guess is this little setup only works with a sea breeze.” His sardonic tones carried across the roof, acid and tense.

He was thrumming like a kite in a high wind. “Hey. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. We still have plan A.”

He shot her a mildly frustrated look. Sat up abruptly and dug in his pocket for a cigarette and his latest Bic. Fiddled with it, gave it a sneer for being less than the Zippo he knew and loved; or maybe because he was just generally offended right now. “I like plan B. It has style.”

She watched him lighting up, amused. He was practically jittering. “No you don’t. It’s already taking too long. You just want to be off killing something.”

That earned her a mock-growl around the smoke, complete with lifted eyebrow and an innocent look. “You think you know me, Slayer. I can carry out a plan with the best of…” Before he could finish the sentence he had tugged away the cigarette and dissolved into something suspiciously like giggles. He dropped his hand back to the gravel of the roof, the burning, aromatic… Not Morleys this week. Camel? sending up a smoke-signal on the other side of him in a slow, twisting column. “Sorry. I just heard meself. You’re right. That’s a load of rubbish. I’m bored as hell.”

The fond smile touched her lips in spite of herself. “I thought so. But that’s okay. We only have another half an hour.”

“Bugger,” he answered, and brought the butt back up to his mouth for a pull.

He was just finishing up the second cigarette when a high-pitched keening sounded on the still air, accompanied by a familiar, heavy _whap-whapping_ sound. They came to their feet in unison and turned around, seeking. And saw Drugas and his three ungainly offspring as they circled high above to come in for a landing at an odd angle, from over to the northeast. “You have called?” the bat-beast queried in its weird, high-pitched voice as it skidded in for a landing. Behind it the trio of batlings landed with much less grace, and they all folded their wings around themselves, to the accompaniment of a wafting of unpleasant odors. 

Spike coughed. Buffy, eyes watering, nobly refrained. “We did. We have a question for you.”

The too-intelligent, wrinkled face turned on its side so that the smushed-in mouse-nose looked off-kilter and even more alarming. If it wasn’t already terrifying to see a bat with giant teeth and a head the size of a beach ball and ears like Gatorade bottles, eyeing you with unfortunate clarity, that was. 

“Uh, we were wondering if you’d smelled any other vampires around during your circuits. Besides Spike, I mean.”

Drugas looked confused. “There are many. Do you want them? They will be more difficult to capture. Hunters are much more difficult to corner than prey animals…”

“No. No! We were just wondering… Are they concentrated in any particular part of the city, more than any other? Like, do you think they might have a base somewhere; some kind of centralized location they hunt out of, or…”

Drugas looked thoroughly affronted. “I do not eat these. My young do not eat these. Why should we know of their patterns of movement?”

“Bloody hell. I didn’t think of that. Why didn’t I think…”

Buffy dug her elbow into his belly to shut him up for a second. /All these predatory minds need to stop melding and let me think!/ “But you said you’ve noticed them. Can you consider, for just a moment, if you’ve noticed them more in any particular part of the city?” Repetition worked for Drugas. He (she?) wasn’t the greatest mind, but if you worked within the thing’s limitations, you got a fairly methodical picture of the movements of various life-forms around their domain. 

Drugas managed to look very put-upon, for a creature whose expression hardly changed from a sneering sort of wail-face… but it did appear to think for a moment. “I recall they are more to the south. There are no humans to eat in the areas where they hunt. They have taken them all. They congregate in places we do not go to, for there is no game.”

“Well, that makes a hell of a lot of sense,” Spike put in, sounding like he’d had a revelation. “You think you can pinpoint the center of that activity and do a little recon for us with the babes? Come back and tell us if you find a sort of… I dunno. Central hive?”

Drugas pulled back, clearly unhappy with this request. “Bro’os has asked me to bring you humans. I bring you humans. My young bring you news of more humans. This is what Bro’os has asked of me, in return that I am known to serve him, and do not have to serve Burge and be consumed by his dragons. Bro’os has not asked me to look for you into the affairs of vampires.”

/Ah./ Now it all made sense. She’d been wondering how someone like that idiot loan shark had gotten something as out-of-his-zone as the bat to serve him. “I’m sure Bro’os would say yes if you asked him whether you should do us this favor.” She glanced over at Spike, aware her pronouncements unfortunately carried less weight in this realm than those of the demon lord. “Right?”

“Bro’os owes us a much greater favor than you can imagine, Drugas. For one thing, neither of us have ever killed him. He would definitely say yes if you asked.” Spike was doing his best to both charm and inveigle his fellow demon; throwing on one part charisma and two parts Master-vamp weight. 

It seemed to be working, too. Drugas was weakening. “Only the looking. We will return with the information you seek, and then we will depart.”

“Yes. Thank you. We won’t even ask you to bring us a shipment today.”

“Then we go.” Spreading their wings, first the large bat and then the three smaller ones fell off the roof one by one to take off toward the south.

Buffy frowned at this unilateral decision. “What was that, a bribe? Do this job and you don’t need to work for the rest of the day?”

Spike’s face twisted a little. “Not sure we’ll be here to catch ‘em if they brought ‘em, luv. And with the way Illyria’s been of late, not sure it’s the best idea to have her intercept a packet of human refugees on her own, yeah? Might send her into a tailspin again, and we can’t afford that on the eve of battle.” 

He had a point. Last time it had taken them almost a full dimensional day to coax the Old One back into her ‘shell’ again. The entire thirty-odd hour period had been spent with Spike handling the rocking, anxious Fred-girl while she clung to him and asked over and over again where Wesley was—which was majorly of the heartbreaking, for one thing—and then seeing his horribly gross mummy and demanding to know why he ‘looked so different’ before finally recognizing over and over again that he was dead—which was probably worse—and going into mourning over it… and then heading into denial, rocking, doing some kind of little insanity jag, and then starting over again at the top of the dial. 

Buffy could tell that Spike had found the experience pretty damn harrowing. She could only imagine how hard it had been, since he’d obviously been pretty fond of this Fred girl. Actually, she found herself kind of wondering by now exactly _how_ fond, considering how tender he was with her during these little ‘episodes’. Buffy hadn’t even met the girl, and she found it painful to watch.

She knew there was no need to be jealous, of course, over the tenderness. Whatever had gone on between Spike and Fred was in the past, and she knew from the way Spike always looked at _her_ after these episodes that whatever it had been, it had been platonic. His eyes were always full of concern, of pain, but completely clear of that little half-guilty thing that probably shouldn’t even have been there when he’d been dating that one demon girl during Xander and Anya’s abortive wedding—or, hell, when he’d done the nasty with Anya—to tell her that much. Because one thing about Spike; whatever his demon might feel about the _physical_ deed, both demon and man had the same concepts about emotional attachments. 

Despite the fact that they hadn’t even been together at the time, Spike had thought of anything that had emotionally harmed her as wrong. He hadn’t considered what had occurred with Anya as cheating; not because it had happened during their ‘break-up’, but because he hadn’t had an emotional attachment to the vengeance demon. This? This was an emotional attachment, so he might, depending on the type of connection; because by the time it had developed, he and Buffy had been something of an item again, emotionally-speaking, whether she’d known he was alive or not.

But no. Clearly it wasn’t that kind of attachment. Not that it would have been wrong of him to develop one while they’d been apart… and it always kind of sucked to know that things had happened for the people you loved while you hadn’t been there to see them. They forever remained a mystery of the heart you never got to witness. Important things that would always be an outside-looking-in experience for you, and, well. Time had passed apart. Maybe someday she would ask him. When more time had passed and it hurt him less to have lost a friend.

It didn’t take all that long for the bat-family to return from their aerial reconnaissance mission. When they did, the trio of babies kept up their hover while Drugas set down once more to make the report. “The blood-drinkers nest to the south and east, beyond where your territory ends. They have made their place at a crossroads where many buildings come together; at a street called Gage and a street called Western…”

“South LA,” Spike broke in immediately. “What, twelve miles? And a bit, depending?”

“Why is everything twelve miles?” Buffy answered, feeling mildly irritated. She swore she had done more twelve-mile hikes since landing here than she had done actual slaying. Stupid impossible to move any cars, because all the other abandoned cars were in the stupid way. At best they had managed, what? Two miles in any car Spike had ever hot-wired to get a knot of hurt people out of harm’s way, and all that had done was attract a bunch of unwanted attention from every flesh-eater within blocks of them. Using a vehicle tended to bring every damn predatorial demon for miles out for a look-see, on high-alert for possible munchies. And, as the months dragged on, Spike pointed out, gas was starting to go bad in the damn things, making them harder to start anyway, and it wasn’t like the gas stations were working out here, without electricity.

Buffy hadn’t even known gas could go bad before this little adventure.

Once, Spike had risked it anyway; tried to run around on a motorcycle to do some quick recon, and had had to fight his way home. He’d come back to her bleeding and needed a special feeding-up they couldn’t really afford. Not to mention that if they were trying to sneak up on an enemy… Not so much with the stealth. It just wasn’t worth it. But, really, damn. /What’s ten twelve-mile hikes, plus a bunch of five and whatever-many other ones, divided into eighty-one days? Or, you know, ‘twenty-seven’, but who counts like that?/ 

“It really gives you a perspective for how many damn people live in such a small area in this city, innit?”

“Or used to,” Buffy answered, feeling kind of jaundiced. It would take them half the dimensional day to get out there. A fight at the end of it. Then they’d have to get back in time to be fresh for another battle, another three miles away in WeHo…

A thought occurred to her. It might be pushing things, diplomacy-wise, but… “Drugas, could you carry us to somewhere near that spot and drop us off? Pretty please?”

The giant bat reared back, looking a little wild. “Your mate said we were free to return after we found this nest for you.”

“I know, but…” /But he spoke too soon, dammit!/ And it wasn’t like she could threaten to kill the thing to get it to cooperate. It might just drop them mid-trip or something, and damn the inter-territory incident. It was just too mercurial a creature. 

She had to do the diplomacy thing. “It’s just a quick drop, and then you’re out. We won’t call on you like this again.”

Spike groaned. Probably he thought _she_ was now speaking too soon. But really, the timing was just too crazy. And if they had to walk twenty-seven miles and have two battles in the equivalent of two days, she’d do it, but why not try to cut that in half if they could manage it? Stay fresh for the real fight? 

“This is not a requirement of our fealty.” The flying demon was already preparing to launch.

Well, crap. They were going to have to pay. “Wait! What can we give them?” she asked Spike urgently, and searched her mental list of what they had in the hotel coffers. “What do you like to eat besides damaged people?”

Drugas paused, looking if possible slightly interested. “You wish to barter our services?”

“Yeah. If we can. What do your babies like? There must be something…”

To her sudden alarm, the bat leaned in very close to look her right in the eye with its dark, tennis-ball-sized orbs. _“Honey.”_

It almost didn’t compute for a minute, but when she finally parsed the word… “You’re serious.”

“Do you have it?”

“You’re actually serious.” The tension broke, and she was going to laugh. Seriously laugh. 

“There is none left at the palace of Bro’os. None of the Melissa demons will trade with us. We have devoured all that we have found in the homes we pass. My young starve for _honey_.”

This giant bat, who lived off of god knew how much dead flesh every day, wanted to make a trade for the butt-juice of a bunch of bees. It was all Buffy could do not to fall down on her rear and start giggling at the sheer absurdity of it. “Spike…” she managed through near-hiccups, “do you think we have any left?”

He was, she knew, eyeing her with some concern, like maybe he thought she had gone off her rocker or something. “We might. If the we haven’t used it all by now on those wounded pulsers came in last week, and on...” And his eyes flashed to hers, the faintest hint of guilty amusement sitting there.

/Okay, but if we’d known we were going to need it to trade for goods and services with a bunch of bat-demons, maybe we would’ve used less for that one… um…/

Okay, it had been memorable, if possibly a really irresponsible use of an antiseptic resource. Also, in lieu of water it had required about half the hotel’s remaining available stash of wet-wipes for clean-up. But then, you know, what no one knew wouldn’t hurt them, and didn’t a demon-lord and Champion get a few perks? 

Some people’s vampires tasted really good with breakfast condiments. “Hold on,” she managed with something like a straight face, and with a wave at Drugas, made a dash for the stairs. “Don’t let them leave!”

Spike, still doing his best not to smirk, acknowledged the hiss with a wave and turned back to their winged visitor. “So. You been in LA long?”

Maria found her furiously rummaging in the main hotel kitchen, throwing half-empty condiment containers around. “What…”

“Honey! Do we have any honey left?”

“I… don’t know. Maybe in the pantry, or in the main storage…”

“Help me find it. We need some to trade with Santa Monica’s Champion, or we’re gonna lose this war.”

Maria gaped at her in shock for a sec, then sprang into action. 

The spider-legs turned out to be super useful. The girl climbed up into the highest reaches of the gigantic main pantry, finally, hung there by three clicky appendages, and dropped down a big jar of the stuff, untouched by all the short people. Buffy caught it as it smacked into her open palms. “You have totally saved the day, you know that?”

Spider-girl dropped down on all of her legs and then retracted to come back to her human ones, looking uncertain. “Okay?”

“Thanks!” And Buffy was off again, heading out through the kitchen and the halls to zip back up the stairs. Within minutes she was holding the jar out to the gigantic bat, who she swore managed to look starved as it lifted one leg to snatch it away. “Here you go. Courtesy of Beverly Hills.”

She was stunned when, without further notice, the jar was plunked down on the gravel, held steady with a couple of toes, and immediately wrenched open with the hovering foot. And then, out of nowhere, all three of the baby bats came whirling down like a little black whirlwind, screeching their damn heads off. Buffy and Spike backed away in automatic tandem to save themselves as the creeling creatures crowded around the jar, dipping their noses in in a furious battle of frenzied turn-taking.

After maybe five or so minutes there came the sound of the jar closing, to the accompaniment of disappointed yelps from the trio. “Enough. There will be more when we can extract it. Return home.”

The disappointed infant demons obeyed, clearly reluctant as they squelched stickily over to the edge of the roof to launch themselves. They glistened in the orange light as they fell one by one over the edge; a mess of honeyed fur and smeared skin and dark eyes. Clearly the feast had not included table manners. “But how are they going to clean them up?” Buffy asked in an undertone as she watched them collect gravel and dust along the way.

Spike _humphed_. “How is mum gonna carry us and the jar?”

‘Mum’ solved that by lifting said jar and holding it out one-footed. “One of you must grasp this until we reach your destination.”

Buffy eyed the extremely sticky container, exchanged glances with her vampire. “Eenie meanie miney mo?”

“Hey, I handled the smelly tar.”

“Good point.” With a sigh, she slung her satchel of weapons over her shoulder. Reluctantly handed Spike her axe, and moved up to take possession of the soiled jar of honey. 

“We go,” Drugas announced, and without further ado, or even really any warning, grabbed them up by the backs of their jean jackets. Which was significantly less painful than poking holes in their bodies, but thankfully they were buttoned closed.

And dragged them over the edge of the building.

***  
  
  
  
  
Again, sorry it was so long, but had to lead up to some interesting head-on debates between some of our key players long left untouched in this place!


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyaaa! All caught up again.   
Heavy on the action, here, finally. 
> 
> Couple of notes:   
Haven't gotten to read "Spike: Asylum", so my Betta George dialogue might sound funny (no idea), as I'm extrapolating only from how he talked in the "After the Fall" stuff (where he gets what I'm assuming is a lot less airtime), and also, I wrote most of this before I'd found a way to read those, and was working entirely off of the summaries in the wiki.
> 
> Also, I'm using another of my ancient fanfic conventions in here for BG. Telepathic communication is indicated thusly: --Hi! I'm telepathically communicating with you!-- This being a way to set said communication off as different from /Thoughts/, or past event italics.

**B:**

They passed endless rows of homes and buildings on their flight southeast; some caved in or half-destroyed by fire or demon attack, some looking untouched. An endless urban vista ranged before them; more of the same. Other than the quality of the light, LA really didn’t look all that different than it ever had at this height. Kind of like a mild disaster-zone, but more as if it had just been through a really bad quake or something. And, you know, was having a super bad traffic day, since not one car moved, anywhere. And was having a really horrible power outage, since not one light was on in any suburban area; not even the big gas station signs. And a few flying dragon-types littered across the horizon. And… well, had the occasional octopus-demon clinging to the high-rise city-centers scattered throughout the metropolis, sucking on the power where a few of the more enterprising demon-lords _had_ apparently gotten the lights back on, probably by use of slave-labor. 

Okay, it looked pretty different.

Drugas eventually brought them to a big cluster of what looked like darkened strip malls or warehouses—kind of hard to tell from overhead—and settled into a stoop over a sort of triangular series of crossroads above what looked like a very old-school hotel. There it circled, with them dangling in the wind above. “You wish to be set upon the roof of the one which smells most like the blood-drinkers?” it called into the rushing air.

Buffy exchanged glances with Spike, saw the affirmative in his eyes. It would save time, be unexpected. “You’d do that?”

“For honey, I will. Easier for me to depart swiftly without being marked, as well, from a height.”

/Good point./ Always had to have an eye for the politics. Not that the vamps were big players in the demon-lord political circuit, but still. Give credit where it was due; Drugas wasn’t as dumb as it sounded. “Alright then. And thank you.”

“I will drop you. I will take the honey. I will go.”

/Fair enough./

It gave them very little time to scout their landing zone. They did their best as the giant bat swung around in one last, wide circuit, appearing to move in on the long, hotel-looking joint. “One lookout, looks like; see him Buffy?” Spike’s voice, ripped away by the wind shear, still made it to her ears. She followed his pointing arm, moving with the bat’s movements, caught the foreshortened figure where he stood guarding an access door. 

“Got him.”

They shut up so they wouldn’t be heard during their descent. The aerial thing made it a nice, stealth approach. As if to give them an added bonus, Drugas even dropped them behind the access door’s little hutch, so their tuck-and-roll could be heard but not seen. Onus dispatched, it flew away immediately, the jar it’d snatched from Buffy clutched tightly in one rough-skinned talon.

Ears still feeling stuffed from the wind and pounding with the echo of endless wing-beats, Buffy oriented herself on the likely approaches. The vamp had to have heard their crunching impact, had to be coming around the shelter now. Spike, crouching beside her, had already drawn the sword he’d brought for the festivities, having forsaken his mace in favor of a better vamp-dusting weapon. Their belts both bristled with stakes, and she had more in the satchel.

Eyes unmoving on the shelter’s two approaches, Spike tossed her the axe. Buffy set herself at his right side. And the vamp came around the corner of the building, on Spike’s left. 

Their adversary moved warily. Did not rush with the immediacy of a fledge. He had had some training; enough to control himself. But he was still a fledge. The prickles on the back of her neck felt… weak. Wild and uncontrolled, and they didn’t spread any further than just there. They didn’t touch her spine, her lower back, much less pricking at every hair on her body the way an older vamp did. And he smelled… 

He didn’t have that ‘older vampire bouquet’. He smelled of ‘blood all the time, every day’, where older vamps always smelled of other things too, like they had taken the time to cultivate other interests. The _really_ young ones, the fresh ones, still smelled like dirt, a little bit of decay. No blood yet. This was an in-between-er. Been around a few weeks, maybe. Long enough to get an education, but…

She feinted, drawing his sneering interest, since without the inbred familiarity of Sunnydale to teach them manners they always tended to go for the tender girl-meat. Easy pickings, and all that. Play to expectations.

They had done it enough times that it was rote. As the grinning, overconfident fledge swung at her, he left himself wide open. And completely forgot about the other combatant for a moment. They always discounted Spike kind of automatically, since he smelled like a vamp and they were all caught up in the hunger and the hunt, could practically taste yummy girl-blood with that nice overlay of scent-y excitement that was ‘Slayer’. /Though, if this idiot has met Slayers, you’d think he could identify it and be a little more wary./ 

She poked at him to draw him closer. “Come and get me, big guy,” she taunted, half-flirt and half quip, and opened her arms, axe wide.

He lunged, practically drooling. 

Which was when Spike lopped off his head; before he even had a chance to more than stare in shock at the prospect of being beheaded by another vamp.

“Or not.” She toed the resulting pile of dust with a feeling of mild let-down.

“Huh. That was bleedin’ disappointing.” Straightening, Spike slapped the rest of said dust off of his holey jean jacket. Grinned, and turned to her with a lifted brow. “Wanna go down and see if there’s anything actually worth killing in the building?”

She wouldn’t mind. That little tussle had barely whetted her appetite.

He opened the door. Peered down into the darkness of the rickety old stair, then held it for her and flashed an ironic grin. “Ladies first.”

“Such a gentleman.”

“Not for long.” He abruptly vamped. 

Smiling to herself, Buffy relaxed a little as she peered down into the dark and pulled in the smells, the sounds. Set her senses in preparation for the upcoming fight. Lot of vamps down there. She needed the demon. “There’s my guy.”

“Yeah, well.” He lightly touched one fang with his thumb, his tones slightly regretful. “Somehow I get the feeling I might need this, we run into Charlie-Boy.”

/Oh./ “If we do, I can…”

“No. It’s mine to do. Only right, since I knew him.”

She wouldn’t argue it, though she thought he was asking a lot of himself. She just drew a deep breath of free oxygen and, steeling herself, headed down into the depths.

***

In the end, no one took Charles Gunn. He wasn’t even there. Which was something of a let-down, actually. Mayhem with half-trained fledges was all well and good, but it wasn’t all that satisfying in the long run. 

It did take her back, though. Fighting side-by-side and back-to-back with Spike against a bunch of startled, somewhat ill-prepared, but actually somewhat trained young vamps had been… fun. Even a bit challenging, if just from a numbers standpoint, since there were about fifteen-plus of them hanging around guarding the homestead and hovering around in the dingy corridors of the ex-edifice. Got the old blood pumping again. 

It even got a little harrowing for a few minutes. That was, until they fought their way down a set of peeling amber hallways and through a little, too-obvious cluster of not-so-fledge-y vamps; these a little older and better-trained. 

As expected, the seasoned locals turned out to be guarding a door. An altogether creepy one. It had a weird, octopus-looking demon nailed across it, all rotten, which was… decorative, if smelly. 

On the other side of said door was a big bastard of a vamp with a massive inferiority complex, a serious attitude problem, and behind him, a magickal circle. In the center of the circle was a big four-poster.

On the bed was a really, _really_ large fish. 

Spike had so not been kidding about that. Huh. 

Between the two of them, they were able to take the—honestly, really kind of massive—guard-vamp without a whole lot of fanfare. He was tougher than the rest, and older, but he did way too much talking. It got in the way of his fighting skill. And, yeah, he was good—clearly, for one, he’d fought Slayers before—but just as clearly he had never fought a _trained_ Slayer, much less been tag-teamed like this by a Slayer of Buffy’s caliber along with one of his own kind. Certainly not by a grumpy old Master like Spike. 

Really, it was kind of over before it could get started. 

The real problems started when it came to figuring out how to get this George guy out of the spelled circle that held him captive. 

\--Spike?-- The fish-creature sounded completely stunned to recognize his erstwhile compatriot when they passed through the decorated ring. 

God, that was weird. He was literally speaking inside their heads.  
  
A few other vamp flunkies started to pour in, necessitating a resumption of hostilities. End of break. “Hey,” Spike called to his purplish friend as he swung beside Buffy, knocking away vamps. “Long time no see! You wanna come to Beverly Hills?”

\--Love to! Is this a rescue?--

“Something like that.” _Grunt. Swing_. “Where’s Gunn?”

\--Out with some of his boys. Hunting.--

“Too bad.” They backed up against the boudoir wall as their gaggle of adversaries broke through up to advance. “Wanted to take his measure.”

\--He’s a real bastard. Calculating, you know?--

“Sorry to hear it.” Spike ducked, tossed Buffy a stake to replace one she’d lost in a toppling fledge’s back. “Not surprised that he’d be goal-oriented, though.” 

There were really a lot of vamps. Some of them were even experienced fighters. It was starting to become a hassle; all work and no play for a few… until the fish broke in again. --So. If you wanted a hand, you and your friend…--  
  
“Yeah,” Buffy grunted, and ducked a serious roundhouse from a hulking vamp-paw. “Wouldn’t mind it. “Do we just, you know, mess up some of the symbols on this thing, or what? And then you can put the mental whammy on these guys?”

\--That’s about the size of it.--

Buffy nodded at Spike; a quick telegraphing of thought. He tilted his head in response… and threw his current opponent at her. She caught the bastard and tossed him onto her two. 

While she held the three of them off for a second, Spike bent to the floor. The way was clear for a short time on his side; just enough time for him to scuff some of the spilt blood over the design on the floorboards. 

The instant the pattern smeared, every vamp in the place went kind of limp and started to back off, holding their heads. In fact, they backed off so hard they literally backed right through the door.

/Well, damn. I could get used to this guy./ “Jeez. You weren’t kidding, Spike! Your friend has some serious mojo!”

\--Thanks!-- No longer bound by whatever spell had held him flat on his side, the piscine demon was now upright and goggling at them with interest. --So… bail?--

Buffy shot a glance at Spike. “Maybe you could confirm a rumor for us first? We heard Gunn was keeping Slayers hostage down here, using ‘em to train his vamps…”

\--Oh. Right. Guess we’d better get the girls out too. Got enough off your boy to know where he’s got ‘em stashed.-- And floating like a small, finny whale, the very large fish started for the door.

/This is so totally bizarre. Like, even for _my_ life./ Buffy followed with sword raised, senses primed for vamp-not-Spike. At her left, her guy was doing the same as they followed fish-boy down corridors and stairs toward what appeared to be the former service-areas of the ex-hotel.

\--You’re the one he was always so hung up on, aren’t you?-- George asked conversationally as they entered a vast, booming sort of storage area. Lots of metallic doors and things in the walls, not much else, really.

Buffy shot a glance at Spike’s neck/shoulders, which telegraphed cynical amusement and a kind of rueful acceptance. “I can neither confirm nor deny events which happened outside my presence…”

“Slayer, don’t be daft. Modesty doesn’t become you.”

His candid tones, as always, barely hid a vast wealth of self-depreciating adoration. It made Buffy’s heart clench. “When it comes to you, Spike, especially then, I wasn’t going to assume…”

She was answered with a derisive noise that encompassed an equal weight of irony.

\--You two are kind of cute, you know that?--

“Where are these Slayers, George?” Spike sounded aggrieved to be tagged with the c-word. Buffy fought to stifle a grin.

\--Like I remember. I’ve only been down here once, when Gunn took me down here for a little session. And I don’t mind saying it was kind of stressful…--

Buffy didn’t even want to know what their gilly friend meant by ‘a session’. She threw all her energies into glaring around her at the wide-open spaces, seeking evidence of anything beyond trash and old fights. There was dust on the floor that looked suspiciously vamp-like, some spatters of old blood—some of it dangerously large and pool-ish, and had Gunn let his vamps kill any of these Slayers of his? Were there any left?—and… “They’re alive, right?” she demanded harshly.

\--Look, I can’t tell unless I…--

“Then do a quick look-see, will you, there’s a lad.” Spike’s voice reflected the tension he felt off of Buffy’s furious mind. “Haven’t got all bloody day.”

The fish’s mental voice sounded aggrieved. --Okay, but I’m kind of busy trying to keep those vamps off of your butts. If I reach out searching for more minds…--

“We’ll handle the vamps,” Buffy muttered, eyes darting from the entrances to case the echoing chamber, back again. “Just find us the girls.”

\--Whatever you say, Slayer.-- A short, potent silence, then… --That one.-- And the fish floated a little in one direction to indicate one of the metallic doors, pointed with a doily-like flipper. And, okay, probably they should have guessed.

After all, the door—an old freezer-looking one—had ‘Beware of Dogs’ spray-painted on it in large, sprawling letters. It also had three sliding latches on it. 

Tense blue eyes sought hers. “Probably better you, pet. If they’ve been traumatized fighting these wankers…”

“Got it.” Buffy started for the prison while Spike took rearguard. Which was a good thing, because, attention off of the incoming for a moment to locate the captive Slayers, the vamps were pouring back in. 

She swore she could feel it when her guy vamped out again to take them on. It gave her a little thrill that shivered through her being as she threw wide the latches of the Slayers’ prison.

The freezer door burst open. And three young women exploded out of it, shrieking.

Definitely Slayers. Buffy could tell right off the bat, just from the way they moved. 

Buffy whirled to set herself beside them as they dove, screaming, into the fray. 

These girls were clearly done being used, judging from the way they went immediately into attack-mode, the way they began tearing into the vamps, bare-handed. It was painful to watch.

“Hey!” Buffy called to them, and started tossing out stakes. They caught them by reflex, looking startled but grateful… and went to work. They had very little discipline, and absolutely zero style… but they had the basics. She could work with them.

_“Alright!”_ Spike roared. “Now it’s a _party!” _

His roar caught their attention, his intense, Master-vamp tinglies. And, oh shit. They were going right for him, as a unit, because he was clearly the single greatest threat in the room, per their instincts. Instincts which, in their practically feral states, would not be broken by sharp words or harsh language, especially coming from a stranger. And Buffy was all the way across the damn room; so not there to guard his right, and oh, fuck. 

Panic flooded her to the root of her being. “George, can you keep them off my guy?” she demanded, because she was just too far away, and Spike was already holding off seven vamps, and this had been a serious miscalculation.

\--I was trying for the vamps, but if you…--

“Please!”

The girls abruptly parted around Spike like the Red Sea, dove into the anti-vamp combat with bells on. And Buffy could breathe again.

“Had you controlling ‘em, has he?” Spike asked casually, ducking a swipe from one of the half-trained fledges. He rolled to the right as a slayerette swung past him to engage.

\--How’d you guess? Just started. Gunn wanted to see how far I could reach, how much I could do.--

Already diving back into the fight, Buffy felt nausea begin to churn in her at the thought of being thrown into combat after combat, completely without training, fighting for her life against a whole pack of slavering vamps out for Slayer blood… while being mind-controlled.

Made it kind of tough to like this Betta George, even though the fish-demon had also been an unwilling participant, a prisoner just like them. /Not his fault/ she reminded herself in a grim chant as she worked her way methodically back to Spike’s side. /Not his fault./ 

Weirdly, the girls didn’t look like they knew what they were doing. Which was odd, if they’d fought these vamps innumerable times. For one, they were getting hit a lot. Wounds all over the damn place, Slayer blood flying around all over, making the fledges crazy. Which, to be fair, made the mindless idiots easier to knock off, since they were paying exactly zero attention to the more disciplined duo now holding the center of things, but still. /You’d think these girls would’ve built up more finesse by now if they’ve been doing this for a while. By trial and error, at least, if nothing else./ 

\--He’s had them in a time-loop of some kind in that cell. They die or get mortally-wounded, then it all starts over. They don’t know this isn’t their first bid for freedom.--

“Um, okay, you know that’s invasive, right?” Buffy informed the fish as she ducked a swing and staked a vamp coming in for a taste from behind.

Spike snarled belatedly even as the fangs heading for her neck scattered to dust. “No home-training,” he growled.

Buffy rolled her eyes at the flaring gold and the enormous surge of feral, proprietary rage that hit her through their link. /Oh, for fucksake, Spike./ “I was talking to your fish pal, honey, not the children. And if you’re gonna get all claim-y on me now because we’re in a nest full of vamps, maybe it’s time to turn off the game face.”

You’ve never lived till you’ve seen a vampire in full rage-on turn sheepish. “Sorry, Buffy.” And Spike turned back to the battle, single-minded in his intensity, but every line of his body telegraphing embarrassment for having let instinct override good sense in that moment.

/Demons/ Buffy concluded—not for the first time—_swing, duck_—/are very primitive./ _Stab. Backhand block_. /Good in a fight… my own included…/ The battle itself took about zero thought. The block devolved in one smooth motion into a slicing arc that took off a vamp head, and she was dancing through dust to engage with the next. /…But not much with the reining in of impulses by higher thought, sometimes./ 

At least, these days, she could mostly face that thought affectionately. Partly this was due to the fact that she had actively encouraged the return of many of those impulsive, demon-y traits. Partly it was because she knew that a lot of her own traits were pretty demonic; like the straightforward pragmatism. She got doing what was necessary to survive, like George had done. Boy howdy. She didn’t much like it—and knew from hearing his mental ‘voice’ that George hadn’t much liked it either… but she got it. 

And the whole ‘build a nest and defend it above all others’ thing… Okay. Viewed through a vamp-lens? /That was basically what I did in Sunnydale, with the Scoobies, even when I was being Miss High and Mighty about it. And I kept trying to find a mate to set myself up as an alpha or whatever. I’m doing it again here…/

Which was nuts, but she wasn’t the only one. Right now, it was obvious that these young Slayers had made a little nest for themselves out of their chance association. They fought like a unit, whether they remembered having done so before or not; like three parts of the same whole. They clearly required little to no communication. And right now they were death incarnate. 

Buffy really didn’t blame them for their rage-on. The idea of being used like they had been was terrifying, bridling. But vengeance was nigh. The tables had completely turned, battle-wise.With the addition of three baby Slayers on their side it was over very quickly, though Buffy had to block one of the children at the end of things when, running out of vamps to dust, she turned on reflex, eyes wild, and tried to stake Spike. “Nu-uh, girl. Go after the ones you know. Leave my vamp alone.”

That earned her a suspicious glare and Spike a forbidding one, but the young woman had whirled away to stake something else instead. End of tense moment; at least for now.

Fight finally over, they stood among the piles of dust and floating motes that were the remains of Charles Gunn’s decimated vamp army. The three slayerettes panted and stared, all wide-eyed to be freed of their long and apparently time-diddled incarceration, while Spike and Buffy exchanged a long glance. “Bracing,” Spike opined after a moment. 

“It was a good little fight,” Buffy agreed, and fought the urge to drag him down to the floor and make out with him. /Not in front of the children./ “I suppose we should get out of here before the reinforcements come home.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he answered, though he sounded a little sad about it. “Too bad. Might have been nice to put paid to this entire operation for once and all while we were down here. Most like he’s just gonna start all over, and have a serious grudge against us while he’s about it.”

“Yeah, well…” Buffy turned back to her newly-acquired slayerettes. “We’ve removed his biggest weapon. Hey.” She nudged one of the girls, very gently, on the shoulder, and pulled back when she whirled, hands and stake up in a defensive posture. “Friendly, here.”

“Who are you?” the girl demanded in a half-shriek.

/Jumpy./ Not that she blamed them for being on edge, considering. No clue what these jerks had been doing to them down here, but probably none of it had been good. “I’m a Slayer, like you. Spike’s a good vamp. He fights on our side. We came to free you…”

“There are _no_ good vamps,” one of the other girls ground out, tensing even further, if that was even possible.

Well. This was going to be a little more complicated than she had thought. “You’d be surprised,” Buffy answered quietly. “I used to think so myself. I was younger then, and a lot stupider. There are tons of shades of gray. But I get you’ve been through hell, so…” She waved her hand to encompass her lover, now busy ignoring the moral debate he’d heard all too many times as he poked around inside the time-looped cell. “Let’s just leave it at, this vamp helped save you, okay? And, he’s the demon-lord of Beverly Hills, and he wants to offer you asylum and protection. If you come with us, you’ll be a lot safer than you’ll be wandering around on your own waiting for Gunn to come pick you up again.”

That apparently convinced them, despite their reservations. Or, heck; maybe their telepathic fish-friend gave them a little push. Not that she wanted to think too much about that, considering the mind-rapey aspects of the deal. She honestly just didn’t have time to ask questions. They had too many deadlines going. 

One way or another, within a half-hour of their impromptu battle they were heading north again with three damaged slayerettes and one very large fish in tow, hovering sort of half above them all like some kind of animated blimp. All three slayerettes had wounds of some kind, some partially-healed, some brand new, and none that in any way looked like they’d been cared for very well. They were jumpy and wary and looked like they might rabbit at any second. 

And if the fresh, Slayer-y blood didn’t attract attention, surely the giant floaty fish would. 

It was going to be a long trek back to Beverly Hills.

***

So… things weren’t going to be as smoothly as they’d hoped with the three damaged Slayers. For one, the trek back across the city had vaguely proved to them that Spike was, in the least, not going to immediately off them, but they were still skittish as hell around him. Having him fight next to them in full-on game face was probably not going to be workable on the short timetable the army had going for them. At least, not unless the girls were under the fish’s whammy, and everything in Buffy just rebelled against enslaving her sister Slayers and sending them into battle involuntarily just because they needed the muscle.

If they were going to risk their lives in a fight against a terrifying demon lord, they needed to be doing it of their own free will. 

Really, what needed to happen was, they needed to find out just what the hell Gunn had done to these poor kids. And then the girls probably needed therapy. Like any of them had time for any of that. And, all the therapists were down with Nina and the cop and the rest, needing therapy themselves. It just seemed like a bad plan to turn a bunch of traumatized Slayers over to the safehouse bunch for rehab when there were also a lot of inoffensive little demon-types down there kicking it. They’d probably cause trouble just on instinct. 

Judging from the whole Dana fiasco, these young things were going to be more trouble than they were worth. At least in the short-term.

George, though, was all too happy to tell them about his adventures with Charles Gunn the vampire. Their fishy friend floated around the ‘throne room’ in front of Illyria, Spike, and herself, and gave what turned out to be a really thorough account of what the ex-Team Angel guy had been up to for the last couple of months. --When this friend of yours, Gunn, came to this dimension he was pretty close to dead. A group of vampires found him. Smelled the blood. And, I guess, there was some leggy demon who’d had visions of him showing up.--

“Visions?” Spike sounded flabbergasted to hear it. 

\--Yeah. Guess this demon had led the whole nest to believe Gunn was important to the future of the dimension. That’s why their leader sired him…--

Buffy made a face. “Let me guess. When he woke up from his beauty sleep, he killed his sire and took over?”

\--That’s how he ended up in control of most of the vampires in LA, yeah.--

“Lovely,” Spike put in, leaning back. “He doesn’t even bloody know how to be a proper vamp, then, for all he thinks he does, if he didn’t even get any training.”

Buffy refrained from pointing out that Spike had done a little bit of that in his time, if under the control of The First. After all, that was not only still something of a sore spot, but apparently the whole ‘taking responsibility for showing your childer the ropes’ thing was not something he took lightly.

She supposed she understood that, though, considering the way he’d been… well, brought up. He’d probably prefer to do it better himself if he ever got the chance. Not that she thought he would; and not just because he was with her. Buffy kind of doubted he had, or would try it again otherwise, after the business with his mother. And, damn. Now she kind of felt bad that The First had robbed him of that experience. Twisted it for him, abused his goals in that regard and made him a sort of deadbeat dad. Which was a hell of a weird thing for a Slayer to think and feel in general, and probably her brain was melting under the constant heat here in hell. 

\--He’s led them from then onward,-- George went on grimly. --The first thing he did was to locate the demon with the visions. Destroyed him, drank his blood, took the visions for himself...--

“The thing nailed to your door?”   
  
\--Disgusting, huh? Now he basically believes he’s doing the work of the Powers That Be.--

“Oh, bloody hell, Charlie-Boy. He of all people should know that those things can be faked! Look how I was faked out!”

“Wait, when were you…”

“It’s a bit of a story, Buffy. I’ll tell you later. Shit.” Spike shook his head grimly. “Why would he think a _demon_ would get the bona fides; especially in a dimension like this one, run by the other side?”

Buffy frowned. “Didn’t the Powers give them originally to some demon guy who helped Angel, before Cordy got them?”

“Yeah, but he was a halfer. Had a soul, yeah? A regular demon’s got ‘em, I have my doubts they’re up to snuff. Or if they are, the Powers have some real convoluted plan in place, yeah?”

He had a point.

\--Obviously he can also produce a time-loop, too-- the fish informed them, --but it’s a pretty short one. It lasts a few seconds, sometimes a couple minutes. Aside from using it to trap the three Slayers you rescued, he likes to use it for some take-backsies if he doesn’t like how something goes that day.—

“Oh, lovely. Gets a second go at things. Where’d he get this ability? ‘Cause that’s just bloody cheating.”

\--Some sort of magickal artifact. A spell he found somewhere. He’s been collecting them from every petty demon-lord around. His biggest hit was Westwood, though. When he destroyed Kr’ph, that was when he started using the Slayers to train his army.-- The fish’s voice took on a note of regret. --I was the key to this plan, because I could control their minds.-- The large, luminous eyes glistened as they turned toward Buffy. --I regret it, but it’s what I was forced to do.-- 

Buffy nodded her reluctant understanding. Slaves had to do what they had to do. And he could make up for it here by freeing others. 

“Do you know what his overall goal is?” Spike asked, leaning forward in his chair. He had that crease between his brows that said he was pained by the transformation his ex-buddy had come to. Honestly, Buffy was mostly just confused. Gunn had seemed so chill when she’d met him. Granted it had been a brief meeting, but the guy hadn’t seemed like a super driven type. 

\--He wants to reverse time. Return us all to our home dimension.--

“Well… that sounds like something the Powers would probably wanna get in on,” Buffy pointed out thoughtfully. “If you reverse time, all these people who’ve died here in this hellhole would never have died, right?” /I think?/

\--His methods are dangerous, though,-- George pointed out. --I can’t say how many magickal artifacts he’s gathered by now; like the one he took from Kr’ph’s belly. He believes himself the hero we all need, though he feeds like all young vampires do; and he blames your friend Angel for causing the shift, and for ultimately causing him to become what he is.--

Spike leaned back in his chair. “Well, in a way he’s got that bloody right, but it’s still a bit twisted way to look at the thing.” Fingering his chin, he cursed slightly. “Bloody hell, Charlie-boy. I knew you were a go-getter, but talk about takin’ things a bit out of context!”

“It is possible, however,” Illyria interjected for the first time. “The infant demon does come to the world with its own agenda.”

“Fair enough,” Spike agreed with a wince.

Turning to George, Illyria favored the large fish with a strangely penetrating glance. “How is it that you know all this about our friend?” she queried, with all the emotion of someone asking how a person had figured out how to do addition.

To Buffy’s surprise, the large, frilly creature didn’t quail at the demigod’s regard. --He carried it all in his head for the entirety of my time there. Rehearsed it over and over again like a rant. He’s got quite the vendetta going.--

Handy thing, telepathy, though considering that you’d hear all the nasty with the useful, Buffy was kind of glad it wasn’t one of her gifts. “We appreciate the insight.”

“Yeah.” Spike made an impatient face. “Well. Not sure what to do about Charlie-Boy right now, but as to WeHo…”

“We wish to know if you would be willing to assist us in a preemptive strike against this enemy who wishes to destroy us.” To hell with the preamble. Illyria was nothing if not straightforward. 

You had to admire that.

The floating fish looked mildly interested; or at least Buffy thought that was the expression she was catching. Hard to tell on a face with so little change to its expressions. --What do you want me to do?--

Spike looked a little uncomfortable. “Thing is, WeHo’s a telepath too. Likes to rummage around in the minds of his human subjects; throw things around, pick out the painful stuff. Munch on it a bit, leave ‘em shells of themselves. Likes to make ‘em hurt. And I guess we’ve been cutting into his food supply with our little rescue operation, so we’ve got wind he’s about to come after us. Our best bet is to strike first, but we’re guessin’ we won’t get far if he’s just gonna incapacitate us with all our worst memories and all that rot.”

George floated backward a little, seeming a little concerned. --You’re hoping if I’m with you I’ll be able to distract him with a mental war. Give you time to kill him while he’s busy wrestling with the unexpected.--

“That’s the plan, yeah.”

There was a short silence, while they all held their breaths. Or, while Buffy held hers, Illyria maybe just sat there like a statue, and Spike stayed silent with his fingers occasionally twitching lightly on the arm of his chair to betray his discomfort. Buffy had the insane urge to cover his hand with hers, or to tell him to light a cigarette. He made her jumpy when he did one of these nervous tics of his. 

\--Is that why you came to get me?-- the guppy finally asked, very, very quietly.

/Oh. Man./

Spike looked a little embarrassed. “Well, to be honest, yeah. That and you’re right useful bugger in general. Look, mate, the thing is, everything here is about expedience. Can’t throw effort after something without gain; throw lives away unless there’s payoff…”

George sounded pained, but resigned. --I get it. And I’d definitely rather help you, as a free fish, than Gunn as a caged one.-- He looked a little uncertain, if fishes could be said to look anything. --What if I said no, though?--

It was, surprisingly, Illyria who spoke first. “Then you would have declined. And you would find some other way to use your gifts for the betterment of our current society, though we would hope you would remain safely with us rather than departing. Though, of course you would be free to go elsewhere as well.”

Buffy stared briefly over at the indigo creature, kind of amazed. /Huh. Who knew?/ 

George was staring as well, though Spike only looked relaxed and in total agreement. 

After a second, though, their piscine visitor let out a bubbly breath. --Free will is all I ask. I’m in.--

_“Really?”_ It was out before Buffy could censor herself. Mostly because she hadn’t really expected it. After all, if it _were_ her in that situation…

Spike pushed himself to his feet, his hand falling to brush hers even as he glanced over at Illyria. Triumph roared through his frame, and through the blood link to kindle the same exultation in Buffy’s being. “Then it’s on.”

***

The War with WeHo actually went down pretty quick once they got down to it. It didn’t take long to get all the demon-girls in the saddle and everyone suited up for battle and everything, since everyone had already been on what Xander had always called ‘Yellow Alert’ before she and Spike had gone down to South LA on their little side-trip. Illyria always seemed ready to rumble—at least when she wasn’t busy being Fred—and George, after a few funny murmurs to himself that sounded suspiciously like meditations, reappeared clear-eyed and focused.

The biggest surprise had been the three slayerettes. They showed up just as the troops were amassing at the front doors, ready to head out. “Where are all of you going?” Nicole demanded. Her sharp voice sounded suspicious as hell. 

Spike and Buffy exchanged a glance that ended in the unspoken agreement that she should take point in all negotiations with the children. She stepped out of the crowd to respond. “Heading out to a battle. You girls will be safe here till we get back.”

Tonya shot her two compatriots a look that seemed to contain volumes. They nodded, and then the girl stepped decisively forward and shoved her dreadlocked hair behind one ear. “Then we’re coming.”

The other two stepped up behind her to flank her from either side. They were kind of a sight; Nicole with her tangled, sandy-blond mess of hair and dirty face, looking like hell with the huge scar above her right eye, Brenda with the big chunk missing out of her tangled auburn mane and the giant bruise on her near-transparent, sunburnt left shoulder, and Tonya with the healing gouge right across the top of her chest, deep from the left side and shallowing to the right, puckered like it had just come out the other side of infection only due to the expedient of Slayer-healing. Like someone had tried to carve her heart out with… Well, probably a wooden stake. And all of them with too-speedy, hard, haunted eyes.

God. Would they be more of a liability than a help? 

But on the other hand, if she were them, Buffy knew she would rather keep fighting than sit still and think about what she’d been through. That kind of stillness, for a Slayer, was utter torture. No doubt they’d probably had enough of being boxed up and made to sit still until someone told them they could move. 

They needed to get their aggro out. Point the rage at a permissible target. And since they’d been told the only nearby vamp was off-limits—that they, for god’s sake, had to be _grateful_ to him—that left finding violence somewhere else. _Anywhere_ else. 

Buffy shot Spike a glance; a ‘Don’t want to step on your official DL toes, but when it comes to wrangling the baby Slayers…’

He shrugged, in effect a, ‘Your call. If you think they can handle it, I trust your judgment.’

She turned back to them. “Okay. But. You have to be able to follow orders. We’re going up against a major demon lord, and he’s a nasty one. He can get inside your head, make you relive your worst memories. And I bet you’ve had a lot of those built up recently. So it’s no disgrace to back out now and grab the next war.”

The three girls exchanged glances, looking briefly uncertain. Then they all hardened up simultaneously, in a way that could not but make Buffy proud of her sisters, her lineage. 

They reminded her of herself, at that age. /But God… was I ever that _young?_/

“Alright. Then fall in.” She didn’t wait to see that they did it, just turned back to Spike and Illyria. And felt his hand touch hers, brief and cool in appreciation, caught his warm look of admiration as they faced the doors. 

“Everybody set?” he called.

The chorus of ‘All Bloody Hails’ from the sixteen Spikettes resonated in the high-ceilinged lobby. 

“Alright then. Let’s be off. I’m getting bored.”

“Indeed.” Without waiting for the rest of the column, Illyria stalked impatiently away.

“Git ‘em up, move ‘em out…” Buffy quipped under her breath. Spike grunted in amusement as they followed, and the tiny part-demon army—plus one Old One and a telepathic fish—headed down the long red carpet under the green-striped awning and made for Sunset Boulevard.

About two-and-a-half miles later they were hiding out between buildings a little behind and uphill from the One West Hotel in WeHo, scoping out their mark, and Buffy was really just having a terrible time with cognitive dissonance with all these really nice hotels being demon haunts. Maybe she had just spent too much time in Sunnydale, and maybe it was a Slayer thing; this idea that any decent town should keep all its demons underground in nice, dank sewers, or at least crap apartments and dive bars. Not, you know, the best ritzy hotels in town.

It was one thing for her and Spike to live it up in the Pink Palace—and, okay, share it with Illyria and a bunch of half-naked demon girls—because, you know… they were the _good_ guys. But…

But this dimension wasn’t the place for good guys, and she needed to get that through her head. This was a damned _hell_ dimension. This wasn’t Sunnydale; a somewhat decent town run by a Slayer who, for better or worse, kept all the demons behaving themselves with their heads down, minding their manners. LA wasn’t being run by anyone decent at all anymore; not even on the surface level of the past. The demons were running things out in the open now, and so the demons had no reason not to live large. Of course, given the chance, they were doing what anyone would do when they came out on top. 

They had moved uptown. 

Didn’t mean it wasn’t bizarre as hell to see them not in, you know… demon-y places, but in nice, bright buildings with gauzy curtains and huge windows and expensive vases, and… God. Stores she’d _die_ to shop in! /And does that make me a jerk, that I think demons should all live, like, in some kind of squalor? Because it’s not true. I don’t think the… you know, the _nice_ ones should have to, but guys like _this_ asshole, though…/

“No time to get all offended, luv,” Spike murmured to her in that low, sexy growl of his that said he was busy reading her mind. “We’ll teach him some manners in a minute, send him back where he belongs, yeah?”

/Okay, sometimes that was just creepy./ “How do you _do_ that?” she demanded in a hiss of a whisper.

“Everything you think shows up on your face plain as day, pet. Can’t help it if I can read you like a book.” He rolled his tongue a little as he nodded toward the hotel, looking amused. “If it makes you feel any better, it offends my sensibilities a bit too.” He settled himself a little lower, dug the butt of his mace into the dead flowerbed beneath his elbows. “Not sayin’ I don’t mind livin’ in the lap of luxury m’self, but for a tosser like that it just seems that a nice cave or subway tunnel would do as well.”

“Yeah.” She couldn’t help sounding a little petulant in her agreement.

“Well.” He looked back over at their amassed troops, made a _‘tsking’_ sort of face. “We’ll see. LA always did have a bit of a mix. Who knows where his sort’ll end up once we get this place set to rights—if we ever do—but you can bet even if they stay aboveground, it’ll be in some one-bedroom, and not fancy digs like these.”

“I guess that makes me feel better.”

It was clear that he thought she was being adorable, from the indulgent way he was looking at her. It was irritating. She also knew that was why he was doing it so openly; to get her riled up before the fight, so that she would go in all teed off and ready to knock heads together. “Stop playing me like a fiddle.”

His mildly-amused expression slipped directly into an open grin. “No, think we’ll save that till after the fight.”

“Jerk.”

“Yeah. But you love it.”

Was it bad that she did? 

With a sigh she shot him a ‘back to business’ look. “We ready to do this?”

He sobered as smoothly. “Might as well, yeah?” He rolled over on his back to catch Illyria’s eye. “You ready?”

“I dislike this waiting.”

“George?”

“In position.”

Buffy did a quick scan of her slayerettes. They were also in position, and no longer even jittery. They just looked ashen and anxious to get with the chopping. She knew how they felt. She had once been there.

When she returned her gaze to Spike’s, that was all he needed. That quick, piercing touch of the eye, flashing between them, which telegraphed all they needed to know about readiness, but also, ‘Please stay safe, please come back to me’. 

“Alright, then.” With a quick glance over at their tiny army, he pushed himself to his feet. “‘Ours is but to do or die’, yeah?”

“Inspiring.” She joined him and Illyria as they made their charge at the two hooded figures guarding the back entrance to the walled hotel grounds.

***

**S:**

  
Buffy, as always, was a treat to watch in there. The way she’d led her infant Slayers against that damned horned Grellan was a thing to behold. 

Not that she had ever been anything less, of course. And the three young screamers, yelling to beat hell as they pounded after her with everything they had. Well. They had brass themselves. All the twee Slayers tended to have it. Born to it and all. It had taken him back, actually, to watch his mate next to them; a disciplined, lithe form fighting with understated economy alongside the flailing, undertrained acolytes. Not a single wasted move about her, every action thoughtless grace and every muscle and bone working as one seamless enterprise, without need for reaction. 

She had been those youngsters once. He had witnessed it. Seen the fire, the potential… Had fought her then, and been impressed by her ability to rise above her deficits. To chop and change and be more than she seemed. 

And he had watched her become this. This… entity he loved beyond all reason. Because she was more than a Slayer, more than just a woman, more than anything. She was his All. 

Of course, getting distracted with the watching had nearly cost him his head, but that was one of the risks he took when he went into battle with her. 

He, of course, never got anywhere near WeHo. He blamed his rubbish fighting on not having his duster anymore. Thing contained most of his mojo, no doubt. Not having it on him slowed him down, made him cautious. He’d fought like shite, got caught up defending George and a load of his demon girls from half of Kurg’s army closer to the entrance. But at least it freed up Illyria, who despite coming too close, in the end, to the four mostly-human Slayers, managed to hang on to her Old-One self long enough to melt her way through the crowd. She was a sight to see herself; punching through heads right and left to join them at the roaring red demon’s throne, whereupon she had driven her glowing blue fists directly through the thing’s heart. 

Except, of course, that wasn’t where Grellans apparently kept their hearts. 

Unfortunately, that was when George got briefly distracted with the multitudes Kurg sent to kill him so he could stop interfering with the DL’s mojo. Poor bloody fish stopped projecting his mental whammy against the embattled demon-lord, if for a fleeting instant.

Spike got back to him and knocked the attackers away, but it was too late. Kurg had already swung his giant melon on Illyria, and drilled right into her biggest weak spot. Spike wondered if it might be her fear that she wasn’t, in her mind, a proper demon at all anymore. 

Whatever it had been, she’d dissolved into Fred on the spot. Right there on the dais steps, moaning like a day-old kitten. 

Course, he couldn’t even go to help her, stuck as he was protecting George, who was busy protecting every other mind in the place. 

Luckily, they still had a Champion. Buffy had put two and two together, like she tended to do, because she was brilliant whether she believed she could be that clever or no. Without thinking about it in the slightest, she’d swung. And sliced off one of WeHo’s two bloody great horns.

“That’s _it!”_ George had gasped painfully, floating in his circle of dying protectors to Spike’s right. “Get the other one, and he can’t…”

Buffy probably hadn’t heard him, but Kurg’s bloodcurdling scream, the way he’d swung round to protect his skull and remaining head appendage, seemed to indicate she was on the right road. She’d not hesitated, and in a move straight from the hellmouth, thrown her axe at wee Tonya. “The other horn!”

Tonya had gritted her teeth… and from where she’d stood on the far side, whacked off the other. 

It wasn’t as clean as Buffy had done it. The girl lacked Buffy’s form, her style, her strength, and her aim. But it had been enough to leave the thing hanging by a shred of crimson flesh. Screaming, bellowing, shaking his huge dome, Kurg had leapt from his throne and dodged away, clinging to the bleeding stumps with his great, clawed paws. And George had relaxed completely from within the ring of fighters. “It’s over. God, he was tough.”

A loud _thud_ had announced the demise of the demon-lord of West Hollywood, as the bugger had slammed headfirst into a white marble wall on the far side of his throne room and brained himself. Slid to the ground, leaving a greasy trail of too-dark, too-thick blood on the wallpaper. 

Buffy had jerked her head at her girls. “C’mon.” Stalking over to the Grellan, she’d gestured with her repossessed axe. And had her little novices run the half-dead thing through to make sure of it. Given them the chance to get their yayas out, have some victory.

After that it was all cleanup. Because unfortunately, they’d had to ensure that none of the beasties in there who’d seen Illyria’s unfortunate transformation would live to tell the tale. A bit cold-blooded, that, but… politic. 

Once the battle was finished, Buffy came to him, while he was busy poking at a corpse, turning it over to be sure of it. Shoved at his shoulder to catch his attention. Spike had lifted his head, saw the intensity of her eyes. Dropped his sword arm as she did the same with her axe. And they’d just held each other for a long moment, because… that had been damned harrowing. And they’d made it through. Through their first major battle here in hell. And they were both still here. 

Afterward, there was the combing of the place for thirsty, brain-damaged human survivors and any demons who might want to join them; any who hadn’t necessary liked their time under the rule of a Grellan. Then there was the assignment, given to girls like Maria and Clean, who didn’t mind that sort of thing, to dispatch the ones who seemed unlikely to switch sides and who might carry tales. Buffy was no doubt less than pleased about that part, but… this was war, and they were demons who’d as soon cut you up as look at you, so there it was. 

For one thing, they had Illyria to fend for.

Luckily, they were able to smuggle their incapacitated godling out among their remaining army afterward, looking like just another girl. She reverted sometime later, during the trek back, irritated as Illyria ever got with her own mutability. 

The real problem came later, when they got home and realized they had no real way to clean up. They had used whatever water they could at Kurg’s fancy One West Hotel to dab off, yeah, and carted back what supplies they could find, but there was only so much each person could carry, and water was too much of a tight commodity at this point for bathing.

Hell was like to become a little more than just a name, and very shortly, if they didn’t do something about that little issue. And not just for the humans. No water meant no blood.

Not that he wouldn’t rather starve than see Buffy suffer.

Potables were their next priority. And soon, at that.

***

Things are jumping off rather snappily now!


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> War fallout!!! And stuff.   
Thank you to everyone for being here, btw. Life's been nuts.

**S:  
  
**

“Just what the hell did you _do?”_

Spike looked up from his map of the area, took in the thunderous expression of his sire’s sire. “Why, hello Peaches.” He leaned back in his chair and affected a relaxed sprawl, though Christ knew that was never how he actually _felt_ in the man’s presence. “What brings you back?”

“You and Illyria and Buffy going out and starting a damn _war_, that’s what! What were you _thinking?_ Do you have any idea what you’ve done with that crap you pulled over there in WeHo?”

This was the thoroughgoing antithesis of what Spike needed today. Maybe the old arse would be off if he made a bit for drawling and relaxed, didn’t let the poof tug at him?

First time for everything, right? “Was thinkin’ we should hit first before they hit us, actually; thanks ever so for the concern. Didn’t want to lose everything to that horny git. But we appreciate the visit.” Not that it had ever worked for him before now, but all the same he tried for dismissal and leaned back over his map. Water was the thing, right now. There was something of a drying-out lake their scouting parties had found uphill from them in the midst of a load of mansions and the like near South Beverly Park. Franklin Canyon Reservoir, they thought it was called. Only a few miles away, though it would take significant work to make the water potable, and it would be a bitch to carry down. 

In lieu of anything more permanent, though, it would have to do. For one, they had neither the manpower nor the supplies to get the ‘blue gold’ to flow down to them all convenient-like, even if they could rig up some sort of pressure-pump (and Christ knew they’d looked up variations on that theme, like they were in the sodding eighteenth century). For another, the closest water treatment plant had been over in Westwood, which was bloody well impossible even if it wasn’t likely contaminated. Century City had taken over that entire area after Kr’ph’s demise. 

/Uphill it is. If the thing hasn’t dried out through all these bleedin’ endless, sweltering soddin’ days since they last had a reccie. Count ourselves lucky it’s not uphill on the way back./

_“Listen!”_ Angel half-shouted, and slammed his hands down hard on either side of the map. Got right into Spike’s face, so that blood-leverage or no he had to fight against the automatic urge to duck his head, turn his eyes away from the rage in his grandsire’s eyes. To kowtow in response to the memories of mastery, and the voice that, to his instincts, said Angelus was angry and that he would shortly be punished. Struggled within himself, as always, to seek instead the one thing that had ever worked for him, allowed him, if not victory, at least to keep some shred of his dignity intact around this man. 

So he held himself up straight, pulled his invisible cloak about himself. Wit, sarcasm, and the sure knowledge that if Angelus was the elder of them, he, Spike, was by far the cleverer… and that would win him out in the end. Far easier now, while listening to the enraged ranting, knowing that he had something now he never had before. Something that could shore him up no matter what. /I don’t take your leavings anymore. I’m not a place-holder, or a nursemaid for your broken toys./

/Buffy chose _me_. Buffy _believes_ in me./ 

“All the other demon lords are ready to _strike_ now!” Angel went on shouting. “They want you guys out of the picture. You’re too powerful now, too dangerous! Don’t you see, Spike, you idiot? You jumped the gun! You’ve probably started a war none of us can win!”

It wasn’t a lovely prospect, but nothing to be done about it. “We’ll manage.” No idea how, of course, but if you’d seen one apocalypse, you’d seen them all. They’d pulled out each of them in turn before now.

His flat calm seemed to incense his grandsire. “You never could plan anything out, you know that?” The disgust was plain. “You’ve always been impulsive…”

Alright. That cut it. And, honestly, he was a mite hurt, since this tosser had no idea what the circumstances had been. They had made the only decision available at the time. It hadn’t been at all impulsive, thank you very much! “Oh. So you think I should’ve just sat here, yeah? Holed up and let Kurg come here and gobble us up one by one, once he’d had his fill of eatin’ up all our worst thoughts?”

Angel stepped back, looking slightly discomfited. Folded his arms across his chest. “No, but… I’m just saying, you never think things through! You had no idea what the fallout would be…”

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from…”

“…You just went and…”

“Saved everyone’s lives?” Buffy interjected, entering from behind them.

Angel jerked. Spike didn’t, since he’d felt her coming. “Don’t tell me you agreed to this crazy assault…” the old git accused her, still wound up as hell.

In the face of what appeared to be a solid tantrum, Buffy remained calm. “It was a joint decision between the three of us. And no offense, Angel, but you weren’t there.” Spike could hear the unspoken beneath those words. ‘Just like you weren’t there for any of the other wars we’ve fought, so you don’t get a say.’

She approached the makeshift desk—really just a table in the Polo Lounge, since Spike rather enjoyed any excuse to sit in what passed for sun in this dimension, tingles or no—and laid down a schematic she had been holding. “Gris says she thinks they can refit at least two of the old war cars from the Non days to be used for transporting the water down. The only hitch is getting them past any stalled traffic, but if we can use Maria’s truck to sort of bang them out of the way…” She laid a hand easily on the back of his neck as she came round to regard the map. “That is, if we’re going for the reservoir. Tiny won’t stop ranting about how it’s the best option, but then we both know he’s biased.”

“Yeah, well.” Spike leaned back a bit, automatically, into her touch. “He wouldn’t go back into Century City’s territory if we paid him in kittens. But I think it’s safe to say we’ve ruffled enough feathers for the time being without starting another territorial tussle.” He shot Angel a quick, sideways glance full of rancor. “Not that we probably couldn’t take him, too, but people would really think we were in it to be players, then. And no doubt that Randolph bird’s right about the water being spoilt.”

“At least the reservoir’s pretty much in our territory already,” Buffy agreed with a faintly troubled expression. “At least, I doubt Sherman Oaks would try to claim anything that far south. And Cheeks said Burbank’s scared to come down here as long as we have Illyria, so…”

“Are you kidding?” Angel broke in, sounding choked. “Illyria’s the only reason you guys are still on the map! But they’re all banding together against you now. That’s the main reason I came back; to warn you! Burge just had a meeting with Compton. I overflew it close enough for Cordelia to hear what they were saying, before his dragons almost flamed us into the next county. They’re joining forces. They heard about your hit on the vampire nest down south…”

Spike lifted his head to gauge his grandsire’s reaction. “Yeah, that was Charlie-Boy’s group. Or, still is I guess, though we whittled it down by… how many d'you think, Buffy?”

“Got about fifteen of them,” she agreed quietly. “And his three captive Slayers. And Betta George. Though we didn’t find whatever magickal artifacts he’s been collecting to try to kill you and turn back time.”

Angel was staring at them with a kind of sick expression, like he’d been punched in the breadbox. “He wants to kill me?” he choked out.

“Seems he’s got himself a case of the visions,” Spike answered sardonically, and leaned back in his chair. “Though no one seems to know who they’re comin’ from.”

Poleaxed, Angel staggered to the nearest seat and half-fell into it, his gob flapping ineffectually for a mercifully quiet minute or two. 

“So,” Buffy went on, clearly calling the meeting back to order. “Did we scare anyone else into this alliance when we hit Gunn and Kurg?” Her voice rang in that moment with that deadly certain calm that said she knew battle was en route, and she would be prepared to face whatever fallout would come of her actions. 

Christ, she could make any monster sit up and take notice. She made a man proud to be hers, and to follow her. He might look like the one running the sodding place on paper, might even be doing his part; and hell, he might even technically hold her bond, but when it came to who owned who outright and who followed?

All too bloody clear. /Sworn you my fealty much as if I were a sodding minion, and long before you gave yourself to me. I’d follow you to hell and back./ Already had, come to that. The fact that, this time, she’d followed _him_… It was just bloody weird odds, still stunned him every bleeding day, that he had earned that from her. And he’d pay her out for it, make it worth her while if he had to dust doing it.

‘Course, she’d kill him if he dusted again, so that was right out.

“Yeah, it was definitely not just them,” Angel answered in a much quieter voice. “Cordelia heard them mention all of ‘em. Burbank, Sherman Oaks, Century City; even that quiet guy over in Santa Monica.”

Then they’d gotten to Teeth as well. /The little pissant. Guess no good thing lasts forever. The blighter never does stop talking for long./ “Well, well,” Spike murmured, mostly to Buffy. “Smells a change in the wind, our mate Bro’os.”

Her eyes glittered unpleasantly. “You think we should pay him a visit?”

“Wouldn’t hurt to get the inside scoop, yeah?”

“Wait. You two know the Lord of Santa Monica?”

Buffy smiled that small, secret smile of hers that said she was planning unfriendly things for one very unfortunate demon. “Oh, we’ve been acquainted since before Hell-A.”

“Yeah, we go way back, us and our pal Teeth,” Spike put in with relish. “Had a few run-ins with him back in Sunnydale. He’s a bit wary of me. More than a bit respectful of Buffy.” 

Buffy scoffed at that. “I thought so too. I thought we had an arrangement.” Her expression tones went steely. “Apparently not so much.”

Bro’os was in for a world of hurt. “He’s been avoiding us, I expect, if the other DL’s have been approaching him.” He shot Buffy a glance that was meant to be soothing. After all; demons tended to flow rather like water; that was, at the bottom of the culvert. They followed gravity. The path of least resistance.

That was, unless they were in love. And Teeth was in no way in love.

Spike’s attempt at mild appeasement didn’t work. “I guess we didn’t have as much of a decent working relationship as I thought. I figured he’d do just about anything to keep on our good side.” Tapping the now rolled-up car schematic in her palm, Buffy turned to him. “You wanna pay him a little visit?”

“Wait; you want to go ruffle more demon-lord feathers _now?” _Angel protested, sounding floored. “Do you wanna _drive_ ‘em together?”

“Relax, Peaches. If we play our cards right with Teeth, we might even end up with a reluctant ally in this fight.”

Angel frowned fitfully. “Well, God knows we need ‘em.” He waved one hand, as if sure they were insane. “Obviously I can’t stop you. You two are going to do whatever insane thing you’re going to do next, but I seriously think you’ve lost your minds and you’re going to send us all even further into hell.”

Pushing himself to his feet, Spike leaned over the table with arms locked and regarded the maps spread out there with vivid dislike. “Hate to break it to you, Granddad, but we’re trying to get us out of here.” Putting it all aside for a moment, he turned his head to smirk over at Buffy. “Despite the fact I kind of think it suits us.”

“All except for the no baths thing. I could really use a bubble bath.” Buffy wasn’t looking at him, though, as she said it. She was instead regarding her former sweetie-bear with crossed arms, her expression surprised. “When did you get so scared of taking risks, Angel?”

The old ponce winced. “Since the last time I took a risk and sent all of us here.”

He had a point, frankly.

Buffy nodded, looking down at the dusty, green-patterned carpet between her feet. “I get that. But you need to get over it. I’ve made my share of mistakes as a leader, and you have to come back from them. Come at the next challenge fresh. Not let it suck you down to where you’re constantly questioning yourself, or you’ll never recover.”

Christ, she’d grown. Spike couldn’t be more proud of her.

Angel came to his feet with an abruptness that astonished even Spike. “Oh, yeah, Buffy?” The bitterness in his voice alarmed her enough that her head jerked back up, and she stared at him in concern. The shock of it perked through her blood to startle Spike’s as well; an unfortunate side-effect of the bonding. “When’s the last time one of your mistakes cost you not only lives but maybe _millions_, and untold suffering to the rest, _and_ lost you all your powers so you couldn’t do a damned thing to help the people who were left but play a big charade and hope it was enough?”

/Christ, Angel. Whinge much?/ Though, granted, Spike was rather glad the plonker at least got it, what he’d done.

“And leader? Let’s be real. I’m on my own here. I’m leading _no_ one. You and _Spike_ are the leaders now; and Illyria, who barely knows who she is half the time. _Lorne_, of all people. Groo, who isn’t even from the dimension LA _came_ from. _Not_ me.”

“Wow,” Buffy answered after the ringing silence that followed that little melodramatic spiel. “Did Cordelia put up with it when you went off like that? Because I’ve gotta tell you; that was _not_ attractive.”

/Ha!/

Angel reeled back as if she’d slapped him. And then something dawned across his morose sodding mug, and it cleared a bit. Made his eyes turn from self-pitying to quietly tragic and filling with a growing well of what actually looked like… determination. “No,” he answered softly. “Cordy would tell me to stop whining, pull up my big boy pants, and deal with it.”

Buffy smiled a little. “That sounds like something Cordelia would say. And for the record, I think it’s good advice.” She tilted her head a little. “Maybe I’m just now getting, a little bit, why you two worked.”

His eyes narrowed, and he straightened. “I don’t need this. Listen. I just came to warn you. I’ve got to go.”

“Hey.” Buffy reached out with one hand; a gesture of conciliation that didn’t so much land as hover in the air between them. “I wasn’t trying to fight. I meant it. I’m glad. That you worked.”

The old fool regarded her for a moment, face tight and uncompromising, and then, incrementally, he relaxed. Nodded a little. Even managed about one-quarter of a pained smile. “It’s still a sore spot,” he answered quietly. “Sorry.”

“I am too.”

“Yeah. Well.” He turned abruptly to face Spike, as if just then remembering he was there. “Just…” He waved a hand in a frustrated motion all-too-familiar to a member of his family by this point, but didn’t finish his sentence at all; as if the words he wanted to say were ganging up in his throat like to choke him.

Spike shook his head grimly. “We’ll let you know somehow what happens with Santa Monica. What Teeth says in the way of intel. What to expect, yeah?” He shot Buffy a quick, pacifying glance, though he wasn’t sure she saw it. “In the interest of solidarity.”

“I’ll, uh, pass on word of any further developments. Troop movements, things like that. If anything comes to a head, I’ll let you know.”

“Yeah. Great.”

“If there’s a battle…” His dark, broody great eyes darted from Spike’s to Buffy’s, tense and anxious.

“Then there’s a battle,” Buffy answered flatly. “Nothing new there.”

“Yeah, I guess not.” Shoulders rounded with a new weariness, he turned and headed for the doors; no doubt to the stairs and his dragon.

“Angel,” Buffy called after him. 

“Yeah?” he answered without turning.

“Thanks for the warning.”

“Hey. It’s what I do, right?” And he was gone.

Spike watched her as she turned back, expression conflicted. Moved to settle into the seat closest him, frowning into her hands. He gave her a long minute or two before he spoke. “You alright?”

“What? Oh. Yeah. It’s just…” She shrugged. “I never thought things would be so weird with him.”

Spike made a sour face. “Yeah, well, he probably thought if you were here you’d be where he was, supporting him through his tough time. So he’s a bit raw over it.”

A flash of guilt touched her features for a mo’, and he winced inwardly. “Don’t you regret it for a moment, Buffy. He’s a big boy. And it’s not your responsibility to hold him up when he’s having a shite day, yeah? You don’t need to do that for anyone. It’s finally your turn to live just for you…” She looked, if possible, even more guilty, which was bollocks, and his voice hardened. “You just reminded him to think what would his bird do, innit? Probably the best advice you could’ve given him.” He did his best to catch her eye. “He’ll do. He always manages. He’s like a rat, that one. He lives through everything. And you…” He caught her hand firmly. “You deserve to be happy. Not stuck doin’ what you think you _should_ be doin’ because you think you _owe_ it to somebody.” Pulled her away from her station and close. “You don’t owe that prat a soddin’ thing. Don’t owe the world a soddin’ thing, come to that; so everything you’re doin’ here is a bloody bonus. You should be in bleedin’ Tahiti right now, dancin’ the night away, and here you are in hell, savin’ lives still…”

“I love you.” 

He stuttered to a halt, confused. “What was that for?”

She smiled at him, gave him a shove so that he toppled back into his seat, then moved to curl up on his lap. “For being exactly what I need.”

“Yeah?” He was right glad to hear it, though he wasn’t at all sure what he’d done that had been so bloody right. Maybe he ought to take notes for next time. “What was that, then?”

“Not someone who’s always trying to fix things, or tell me what I should do. Just someone who wants to be here, by my side. Someone who wants to help hold me together whenever I feel like I’m about to fall apart.”

He wrapped his arms around her, held her close. “Can do that, luv.”

“Even if I smell bad.”

He chuckled. “No such thing.”

“Liar.”

“Not lying. You have all these lovely little scent glands…” He nuzzled at the crease of her neck. She was so bleeding self-conscious nowadays about her much-abbreviated toilette. He had bloody well hated the scent of those perfumed wet-wipes on her skin, all over chemicals and ‘fresh’ odors, and tasting of bitter artificiality. Hadn’t she realized none of that shite had made her any cleaner than going about sweating? He’d finally convinced her to stick to scrubbing down the bits of herself which most concerned her, and to leave his favorite bits to nip, at least, bloody well alone. “Here, which is why biting’s so damned nice. Here…” He drew in a long, heady pull at the complex aromas issuing from her scalp. It was said that human males were taller than the females largely so they could do this, and that science had found that only women had these glands. He didn’t doubt it in the slightest. Pheromones, scents that made him mad. Christ, he could just plop his bloody neb down here and never move, if she gave him leave to do it.

He fingered the long strands of her mane as he drew in the wafts of scent. It was difficult, of course, to see what this climate was doing to the glory of her hair. Too dry at the long ends, bit lank at the top. She wasn’t the only one who had a fair amount of grit in her scalp. He had long since given up putting any sort of product in his own hair, since he couldn’t wash the shite out and reset it. Made going into battle like a curly-headed poof an uncomfortable prospect, both the other day and in future, and he’d felt like a sodding fledge facing down his sire just now, but it was what it was. He hadn’t had gel and mousse and the like for the whole first however many bloody years of his existence, nor yet modern shampoos and things. /Egg whites, vinegar, baking soda, pomades only on special occasions./ 

He’d shown Buffy and the girls the soda-and-vinegar bit a week ago and change, when they’d still had a bit of water left for a rinse. The whole sodding house had had a nice hair-washing party, him like a great nancy with his harem. It had been bleedin' odd to smell the vinegar on Buffy’s hair, blocking out her scent there atop her head for a few hours, like gone-over wine… but she had been surprised and well-pleased by the unexpected results and the ease of rinsing. 

He had had to push back a tide of memories, of course, because for any number of years that was how Dru had washed her hair. When he’d gotten a bit of a strained expression over it, till the scent faded, Buffy hadn’t asked.

He nuzzled the top of her head some more, losing himself for a moment in the proof that this was _Buffy_, here. That she was with him, by some complicated magick. That she had followed him into hell, and was by his side. 

Of course, he was at it a bit too long, so that she tried to pull away a bit. Probably she was affronted at his enjoyment of any part of her that had not been freshly-laundered and anointed with scientifically-produced, petroleum-based, false scents with high alcohol contents within the last twenty-four hours. Sod that. He had bowed to her sensibilities when it came to sex, but if he couldn’t feel close to her, just for a moment, he might go mad. She was his _mate_. “Promise, pet…” he murmured, half plea. He held her tighter and slipped his cheek down along her bound tresses, pressed a quick kiss to her temple. “More of them here…” he murmured, tracing the backs of his fingers along her cheeks, beside her ears.

He knew what she’d do as he went on, his fingers tracing over her neck, her shoulder, so he paused at the top of her breast before she could elbow him off and dance away. “Under your arms, of course…”

“Ugh.” 

So bloody predictable, his bird. “Few other places. Your gorgeous quim comes to mind…”

She groaned loudly. “_Spike_…”

“Just sayin’. You can wash all you want, but they’re always gonna be there. They’re just a bit more concentrated now, and the beast in me is enjoyin’ it a bit.” He was trying for something of understatement, there, since as a general rule she rather made him want to rut like a stag all but one cumulative hour out of every day, and that hour largely made up of smoking and making up his mind how to shag her next while she had a bit of a rest to get some oxygen back into her system. 

They could all do with a wash, sure. No doubt he was a bit tacky as well, though he did his best to stay presentable for her in case she changed her mind. He'd certainly had a far more complex toilette himself when they'd been at it during their first affair. There were just some things a bloke did to make himself attractive to a woman, if he wasn't a heathen. Keep the tackle in order and all that. Had done the best he could here as well, till the system had gone out on them entire, and was still doing his best in any case. One never knew, did one? Wishful thinking and all that rot. 

But as to Buffy... he thought she rather underestimated how nice it was not to have a great cloud of other 'fashionable' odors to parse through to get to _her_.

She, of course, rolled her eyes at him. “If you ever wanted to sound like a werewolf instead of a vamp, you just achieved your goal.”

He shrugged and loosed his grip slightly. “Don’t ever want you to feel uncomfortable, though. And any road, if we don’t get that water down soon, we’ll all be doin’ worse than smellin’ a bit rank.” His voice turned grim. “Need to start carryin’ around posies soon for the bodies, and not just cause we’ve gone back in time a century.”

She pushed off his chest with a sigh and reached out to tug the vehicle schematics closer. “Okay. So. The question is, how do we rig a water tank on one of these...”

There were wars… and then there were water raids. And why did he feel like he’d stepped into that bit of ‘Mad Max’ he’d watched on the telly just before LA had gone to pot? “Have to find one first…”

No telly here. Hadn’t missed it, with all the sex. Best get the water business figured so he could get the latter back on-line, or he’d go half-mad wishing they could sort out a way to manage a movie night in the hotel. One that wasn’t a pantomime, since there was no sodding electricity.  
  
Slayer was hell with weapons, but she had already proven she was shite at poker.

“Or a bunch of barrels or something,” Buffy went on, as pragmatic as ever. “But ones we can seal, or else we’ll lose half of it on the way downhill. And then, how do we protect it till we get it down here…”

Spike was already skipping ahead, because he was a thoughtless sod when it came to planning. Execution was his strength. And, well… “Oh, we’ll get it down here, Buffy, and then you’ll have your bubble bath. And I’ll scrub your back till it glows, wash your hair for you…” He could see it in his mind’s eye. Kneeling behind her at the side of the tub, a penitent in service to a higher calling.

Hell, she was glowing just hearing him say it, apparently thoroughly diverted for the mo’ from talk of strategy, and he could smell her arousal… and for a short while he honestly forgot any previous promises regarding certain rooms. Not when…

God knew he’d spent enough sodding nights of his life wanking over Buffy without touching her. 

“That…” Buffy whispered, fingers trailing sightlessly over the dog-eared pages in her hands, “sounds… like a really nice evening.”

***

**B:  
**  
There was iodine in the hotel’s medical supplies. Unfortunately, not one of them knew how much of it to use per gallon. And it wasn’t like you could just hop on the internet out here in hell. Which meant, another side-trip; this time to the nearest library.

“This is where we could’ve used a doomsday prepper. Or even just some army vet or something.” Buffy made a face as they marched once more into the heat of the oven that was their current—and possible forever—home. “I mean, even Xander might have known. You actually have to ask for him to kind of access the memories, but he still has all that military stuff stuck in his head somewhere.”

“Well, we’ll have to do without Harris for the time being,” Spike growled as they poked their heads around the latest low wall between Santa Monica Boulevard and Rexford. The arched building that was the Beverly Hills Public Library was just a few hundred feet away, and really it had only been a mile and change from the hotel, but still. 

“Hopefully no one else has raided the library, and we can get back without any more pit stops, before I ruin my bath.” Buffy would never have thought she would even classify what she’d experienced up on that hillside as such, but after almost three months of little more than sponge-bathing, and the week and change with barely any water, it had felt like heaven to pick up a bucket of tepid lake water and pour it over her head. Scrub it over her face, her probably-wrecked skin. To pull out another. Take her (at this point, nearly-permanent) ponytail out; dig at her scalp with her fingernails. Hang out behind the shelter of that little marina and wash parts of her that had, despite having seen the most attention out of the entirety of her body, still hadn’t felt truly clean in ages… and then get splashy with it. Take her time and really reacquaint herself with the luxury that was _water_.

You really took that kind of thing for granted in the modern world. 

Spike could talk all he wanted about how all this stuff was secondary to him, after the centuries he’d seen, et cetera and blah blah blah, but he didn’t get to talk. He didn’t sweat, for one thing. And she hadn’t lived in the eighteen-hundreds or whatever. She was a girl who liked her plumbing. 

Buffy wasn’t been the only one, either. Before they had even started with Operation Bring The Water down, pretty much every demon-girl and monster on the detail had snuggled up to a bucket and ducked behind the wall of some abandoned estate—or just started sousing down in front of everyone, depending on their modesty level—because, yeah. It had been a while since they’d had any to spare.

Buffy was well aware of priorities. Most of this water would be sent on to the safehouse, since _their_ need was, at this point, pretty much dire. Conner and company had long since raided every water vendor and bottling company within a fifteen-mile radius of their warehouses, and with hundreds if not thousands of people to feed, water, and clothe…

The Beverly Hills contingent would have to make at least one more trip, either way. And as for this trip, most of what they had left after that would be for drinking. But. Buffy would happily do ten trips like that one if it meant more bathing water. And not just because the funk had been seriously cutting into her sex life.

“After we figure out this business with the water, you want to drop in on our friend Teeth?”

She hefted her trusty axe. “I’d love to.” She was so going to keep this thing. She was starting to get super fond of it. “If we ever get out of here, this is mine, right?”

Spike shot her an amused glance. “Think it’s a part of you now, luv.” And then he lifted his head to survey the rusty sky for winged invaders. “Consider it a gift from Wolfram and Hart for sending you to this bleedin’ dimension.”

“Mmm.” They didn’t need conversation to know when they were both set. They could read each other far too well to need that kind of verbal interplay; had been able to for far longer than they’d been in this relationship. She darted around the wall, him a half-step behind her, and they made their sprint along the denuded street toward the stately building that housed their required resource.

A few minutes later they were hovering in the arches, Buffy shoving a Boy Scout-type survival-skills tome into her satchel and mourning the loss of coolth that was that stone building as they reemerged. “Why is it that we always end up consulting books to solve problems? No matter what dimension we’re in?”

“Kind of amusing that back home it was books about things that go bump in the night, or how to draw a pentagram correct, innit? And here in a demon dimension it’s how to disinfect water?”

Buffy would laugh at the irony if she didn’t find it kind of logical. “Everything is upside down here,” she murmured as she assessed their surroundings. “For one thing…” She hesitated slightly, but she had been worrying about it for far too long, and Spike was her sole confidant. He’d known her the longest, and certainly knew her better than anyone when it came to the dual nature she had only begun to admit existed in the last couple of years. She really wanted his weigh-in on the subject. “Do you think maybe it’s that this is the Partners’ playground that’s suppressing my Slayerness a little? Like, do you think part of it comes from the Line, the demonyness of Slayers, and that part can’t be suppressed in a demon-dimension, but the part that has a line to the Powers is the part that’s being cut off, and that part gets a boost back home?”

Spike slowed in his trek, turned in profile to eye her. “Talk me through it, pet.”

Always the hardest damn part. But she gamely gave it a try. /I swear I used to be better at talking when I was younger, before I shut everything down./ Though she felt like maybe she was getting a little better at it again; here, with Spike. Starting with that last year, when Spike had stopped talking, and she had been forced to start; and all the speechifying with the Potentials, and...

Well. Might as well keep up the trend.

She frowned, working her way through it. “I still heal fast, but not as fast. I still have the fighting edge, and all the urges, but it feels like they’re a little different in their… focus, I guess? It’s like there was something that topped off the healing that’s gone, and like what drives me to go out and fight, back home, the thing that pushed me to never rest? That’s what’s missing here.”

Spike frowned as if she was troubling him. “You seem plenty bothered by your conscience, Love. Don’t see any diminishment to that sodding martyr complex of yours, either.”

Well, that was frank enough. “Okay, but that’s probably a soul thing. The human part of me, right, that got all imprinted with the job, and got all screwed up by the responsibility of it all, but…” She wasn’t sure how to describe it, swung her axe impatiently as they walked to whack the heads off a few scraggly, drying yuccas. “It’s more like… I’m still raring to go here, but that’s the instinctive part. The…” Well, if she was being candid, it was hunting instinct, the urge to kill and the thrill of the hunt. 

She could call it patrolling all she wanted, but to the demon inside her, it was hunting; the same thing, she knew now, that had driven Spike to fight his own kind when chipped, just for something to do to spend all the chaotic, restless, violent energy trapped inside him without outlet. “I still need the primitive part, but I’m not as in it for the lofty goal of… I dunno, protecting individual people. I feel…” How to put it? She had never bothered to even think about this stuff back home, much less articulate it. And even if she had ever considered expressing it, she would have been terrified even to think the thoughts aloud in her own head, much less speak them. It would have been admitting to something inside of her which was supposedly oh so ‘wrong’. /How can me being fundamentally what I am be wrong? And how did I swallow that for so damn long?/

With Spike, though, and here… She could more than admit it to herself. /I can _talk_ about it, now./

She could get it out of her own head. No more poison. No more lonely terror, threatening to choke her in her sleep. “I always felt kind of territorial about Sunnydale, if that makes sense, and I’m starting to feel that way about the area around the hotel and the people there. Like they’re mine, but it’s more about…” God, it still felt so wrong to say it. “Kind of, ‘Don’t snack in my hunting grounds’ or something. Which doesn’t sound like it should be a Slayer-y thing at all, does it?” 

She was mildly startled when Spike barked out a laugh. “Sure it does, Buffy. It sounds like a demon protecting a feeding territory, only that instinct’s been turned into protecting what’s inside it for other means, because you don’t eat people, is all.”

Buffy sighed in vexation and looked away. Frustration roared through her; a long-building inner conflict just now given voice. She had to fight the urge to throw the axe at the nearest dying palm tree. 

She was so _tired_ of feeling internally-conflicted! “I feel kind of guilty for even saying that out loud, but if I can tell anyone, it’s you. If I told anyone back home, I’d so totally get judged. Heck, _I _judge me, but…”

“Buffy.”

Buffy rolled her eyes and nodded. “Yeah, I know. And I get it. They made me how they made me. It’s just… each time new evidence comes up, it’s like there’s just one more nail in this coffin of proof that I’m stuck in this weird box, where I’ll always be pulled in two different directions, and it’s not fair!”

Halting, Spike touched her arm to drag her eyes back to his. “Tell me. Anytime, Slayer. With your words or with your fists. Get it out. We can spar, we can fight. Scream at me. I can take it, because I’m a part of it. I won’t take it personal. We can cut each other up, but it’ll just be a play, and then you can shag it out with me till you’re through being brassed for the time bein', and you feel free again." His eyes were warm as tropical skies on hers as he proposed his insane solution. "Or you can keep on till you can cry, ‘cause you know I’ll let you. I won’t hit you when you’re down, ever again, an' you know it. Either way…”

Buffy shook her head hard; a ferocious negation. “No. I won’t use you like that anymore." Sometimes she hated the way he could rivet her with his gaze. "I used to think it’s your fault, but we both know it’s not.” Biting her lip and turning away, she sighed and lowered the axe in momentary defeat. “Anyway… you are.”

He exhaled in exasperated confusion, left behind by one of her verbal shortcuts. It rarely happened, but it was still known to occur. “I’m what, Buffy?” he asked patiently.

Her eyes cut to his. “The only time I feel free. Of all of it. Being with you is when I feel… at peace with both sides of me. I think… it’s what drives me back to you every time. I feel this crazed frenzy to throw myself into you, because you make it all make sense, on this level that doesn’t even have words.” Viewed against the saffron sky, his pale hair looked like he was trying too hard to live up to his old name. /William the Bloody/ she thought idiotically, /Slayer-Wrangler. But, you know, takes one to know one, demon-wise. Or whatever./ She smiled a little tremulously. “I don’t know if that means I’m still using you, but I’m so grateful. That whatever it is in you fits me, and puts me back together again when I’m coming apart like some kind of patchwork doll…”

“You’re not,” he answered softly. “Knowing you can come to me, that I fit you, that you need me like that? It’s not only my honor, but…” He paused, then said, in careful, measured tones, as if he was choosing his words, “Buffy, we’ve relied on each other how long?”

She felt her lips twitch, and with a sigh she turned away to jump up. Caught herself on the heels of her hands, plopped her butt on the low wall behind the sidewalk. “God. Before we had that stupid truce. I relied on knowing I could count on you to be a pain in my ass. I could predict when you’d come up with some other stupid thing to throw at me. You weren’t, you know, gonna throw my life into disaster with some weird, sociopathic agenda like Angelus, or get up to some creepy Aurelian ritual goal no one understood, like the Master. You just wanted my blood or his to heal Drusilla and to have a good party. You were predictable…”

“Oi!”

“Sorry. But you know what I mean.” She smiled into the shimmering oven around them. “I knew where I stood with you. I…” She shrugged, feeling dumb saying it, but it was true. “I could rely on you to give me a nice challenge when the fledges got boring and I was tired of slime-demons. You weren’t gonna bring an apocalypse, so I didn’t have to stress too hard, but you kept me on my toes. It was… nice.”

Spike exhaled hard, through his nose. “I’m not sure if that’s lowering or a compliment of the highest order.”

Fondness stole over her, filled her being like the forgotten sunshine of a home long-gone. “I love you, you know.”

“Well. Alright then. I love you as well, you mad bird.” He shook his head, rubbed his free hand over his face and came to join her on the wall. “Thought I’d gone sack of hammers when I realized I’d fallen for you, but I guess it was the same, yeah? If you’ve found the right dance partner…” 

“Yeah.”

Settled beside her for the moment, he twitched a little, antsy. His demon had been roused to wakefulness, she thought, by all this reminiscing. “Anyway, what I was gonna say, Love, is you’re not using me when you lose yourself in me; and I’m not just talking about shagging. I’m made to be fast and strong enough to fight alongside you… and to fight with you. We’re not what we were. And you process things through your body. So you have somethin’ come up like this, an’ you can’t word about it? We have a nice rough and tumble, and I don’t want you to worry about keepin’ it civil, or that I’ll get hurt. And I don’t want you to spend all your time worrying about us slippin’ back to the bad old days just because you need to dance for a bit.”

Buffy quailed at the very thought, though she nodded outwardly to pacify him, and jumped off the wall. He couldn’t know that just accepting the hurdle of hard, fast sex between them had given her a little bit of guilt, right after, considering everything. Or rather, it would have, if she hadn’t been so high off of his claiming her and driven by simple deprivation that she couldn’t think about anything but jumping him again. That, and she’d been able to feel enough from him to tell that he hadn’t minded in the slightest. /Anyway, we fixed it after, with the lovemaking. We’ve been doing it right, ever since./ Feeling his enthusiasm had taught her that as long as it was reciprocal, it was fine. Their… mutual monsters liked the quick-and-dirty, the occasional props. And she wasn’t stupid. She knew that that sort of thing wasn’t exactly a Buffy-and-Spike-special, or there wouldn’t be whole stores for it, and things like safewords. 

/We’re doing it right now. That's the difference./ 

But she wouldn’t ever fight like that with him again. /Just, no./ Spar yes. Go all out? Never.

She also had to watch herself when she was patrolling. No more ‘hit first and ask questions never’. /I have to do my homework. Only kill the demons who really seem vicious, who are out to hurt people and other sweetie-pie demons. And if we ever get back home, I need to figure out the motives. God, this is complicated./

The thing inside of her that just wanted to carouse, to hunt, to fight clean and set off the charge, stirred restlessly, and she felt a sudden urge to turn, throw Spike to the ground, fuck his brains out. 

It was really kind of one or the other when it came down to it. Which made Spike really super handy to have around. And god, was she ever grateful that he seemed just as into it, or that would also count as using him. /Always have to watch out for that. Always have to check in. Can’t ever do that again./ “I’m just glad I’m here now and not a few years ago,” she told him as they resumed their march, “or I’d be having a massive identity crisis, feeling all these different parts of my Slayer-ness getting all separated out like parts of a smoothie settling in the cup...”

“Why is everything a bleeding food analogy with you, pet?”

/Do you have to ask?/ “Okay, you know what? I miss food. Especially fresh fruit.”

He sounded regretful when he answered. “Don’t blame you. You’re like to get scurvy, we stay here much longer. Startin’ to taste the difference in the blood, with all these sods.” He idly swung his own weapon, frowning. 

“Yeah?”

“You think a hunter can’t tell when the prey population is sick?”

That thought hadn’t occurred to her. “I bet there’s probably a vitamin D issue too, since the sun’s so different.”

He grunted in answer. It sounded like assent. 

They were silent for a while as they turned around the next bend, then, “It makes me wonder how they did what they did to us, though. It’s all so weirdly scientific for something that happened in ancient times. I mean…” Struggling for descriptors, she sought to tell her poet what it was like in the Slayer dreamworld. “Sineya was so… primitive. The way she moved, the way she talked. It was totally obvious that she was barely human, mostly demon. Like, I’m willing to bet they kept her caged up during the day, only let her out at night to hunt vamps or whatever.” Spike was nodding along, as if this all made perfect sense. It gave Buffy the strength to continue her ruminations. “I figure… They had to have done some kind of insane spell to turn all that instinct around; the hunter instinct you’re talking about. Because instead of listening to everyone’s fear and wanting it, it drives my human side into overdrive, and I _have_ to protect them. I mean, to the point that I ignore the demon side of myself; sometimes even turn against it.”

“Stands to reason,” he agreed. “Drives you mad. Seen it. Tears you apart.”

“Yeah.” He saw her. He’d always seen her; the shell she’d built to pretend to her friends, the world… and the thing she hid from them and from herself, beneath. The primitive push-pull of need and want and fear Spike had set free with the black-hole pull of his cold, searing touch and with his eloquent, cutting words. “It’s bizarre how they managed to make someone so demon-y so self-hating, but it was probably just as much to keep her from running off to join the demons as it was to keep us here protecting the humans. We’re a…” Buffy snapped her fingers, searching for the words.

“An ambivalent weapon.”

Her feet crunched over dead, dried-out grass. /That’s me. Ambivalent weapon. Point me at your enemies./ “They used us. Used that… restlessness. All the demon instincts. But also that human conscience. It’s so creepy, how it all works together.” She caught his eye briefly, let him see the naked dread, the confusion she still felt sometimes. “It’s scary, Spike. I have all this fear; even here. The fear that if I don’t do my job, someone will suffer or die, and maybe I could’ve stopped it. But back home, if I didn’t have that part of it, I’d probably be out a lot less. Or I’d use it wrong, like Faith did for a while.” That niggling terror had kept her running from herself for so long, when she was younger, had been just as much a part as anything else of why she had run from Spike, and what they could be. The fear of becoming Faith. 

It took having this comparison to fully understand it, though; understand herself. “Because here I don’t feel that same… I dunno. Constant, instinctive need to just… kill stuff. Not unless we know we’re actually being invaded or whatever.” Which had been kind of a rude awakening, once she had realized it. “Though, I’m not sure how much of that’s because I haven’t had a… I dunno, a territory, since Sunnydale, till now.”

He nodded, swung his blade at another yucca head gone to seed. “Makes sense, luv.”

“But it’s still different, here, even with a place to protect. I don’t feel like I have to be out patrolling constantly. Back home it was an all-the-time thing. It wasn’t just because duty, or Giles telling me to do it. I had this… thing in the back of my head. ‘Go out, Buffy! Protect your territory! Rest is badness.’ Here, though, sometimes it’s tough to get out of bed with you, because half of me just wants to relax, enjoy being a…”

Spike’s face parted in a broad grin, and his tongue rolled fetchingly. “Part-demon girl in vacation-land?” he suggested quietly.

It sent a dart of pure terror through her; almost of self-disgust, but she fought it down. “Too much chill. Seriously. It makes me wonder exactly how much of me is the demon-essence thing, taking a siesta as much as it can while it can…”

“Well, the bloody thing’s been on call for as long as humans have been fighting the Old Ones’ get, so it’s due for a sodding break, innit?”

The point of view startled her. “Huh.” It was true, though. Her demon wasn’t just hers. It had been awake and on watch for like ten thousand years or some damn thing. /Good call./

After a moment to consider, she poked him playfully. “Or maybe it’s just the company. I doubt a whole lot of Slayers got the chance to be in love; especially with an equal.”

He straightened, clearly pleased. Then, as swiftly, his mood changed. “Wager you’re right, pet, the way those wankers carried on like you lot are property.” He sounded gruff with emotion.

Spike might be a little quieter these days than he had been pre-soul, but he was still mercurial as hell. As per usual, her own mood turned with his, because whatever else happened, they tended to run in sync. “The little demons in human cages, who didn’t even know it.” It came out bitter with knowledge. “And I think back home more of my demon side showed up on the daily because there was so much I had to fight, till my human side kept showing up less and less. Here… I think it’s backward.” She shot him a darkly amused glance. “Which is kind of ironic, since I probably could use it the other way around, here in a demon dimension. You’d think it’d bring out my demon side or something, like it does to the halfy girls…”

“Explains a fair bit, though. Been a little worried about some of the things you’ve done and said. Thought maybe the place was wearing you down.” He glanced up the straightaway toward their goal, automatically seeking for hazards, but really he was just keeping his eyes trained everywhere but on her. “You think it’s different for me, pet? You might’ve noticed I’ve spent more time hiding away with you than runnin’ about gettin’ into fights meself. Thought it a bit odd at first, after you gave me my bitty wake-up call during the big battle in the alley.”

She had, actually, and watched his profile for a second, frowning slightly as she tried to read him. “Yeah, but I thought… I mean, the other day when we fought Kurg, you were pretty much one hundred percent crazed punk fighter guy again.” Her lips twitched, eyes briefly caressing his curly coiffure (or lack thereof). “Well, your hair’s not, right now. And I know you miss your duster. But you’re so damn gorgeous when you go all wildman in a fight; like some kind of happy, rabid jungle cat…”

He swelled beside her like she had just told him he was the king of the world, and when his eyes darted back, they were both predictably hot and startlingly soft. “You say things like that to me, Buffy," he damn near whispered, "and I’ll give you the universe on a string.”

“You already have.”  
  
His eyes locked on hers. Hovered between blue and amber, his bones shifting in his face in clear indecision. She was briefly in danger of being shoved up against the low wall, or maybe a palm tree for some swift, extracurricular sex. Or, maybe he might fall to his knees instead and start saying vaguely poetic things. 

Her guy had a hard time with it when she touched his emotions and his demon-side all at once. It made him kind of fall apart, both sides of him tussling for ascendancy. /They _made_ me to split down the middle. _I_ do it to you. I should feel bad about that, except… you’re such a masochist that you seem to like it./

Reaching out, she brushed his face. “Let’s get home first. It’s hot out here, and I just had a bath.”

He drew in a few sharp, in that moment very necessary breaths, and his face fell back to human, his eyes settling on blue. She kept her gaze on his for a moment to let him know that this was in no way denial, merely a brief pause. She had missed him too. “Anyway, she told him quietly, “I kind of wrote off your lack of demoning it up around here as just you enjoying all the honeymooning.”

He caught her hand, lifted it to his lips. His eyes were limitless on hers, pulling her deep. Amusement remained predominant in the bright azure contrast of their depths against the patchy auburn of the sky behind his head. Behind that, though, was a deep, fathomless well of yearning that stretched to infinity; as deep as her own need for him. “Buffy, I would happily spend every moment of every day in bed with you, given the chance. And knowin’ that you want me, want to be there, is a bloody gift.”

Tearing himself away from her gaze, he kept her hand, nudged them back to a walk with firm self-discipline. “But there’s more to it. Love it that you woke the bugger up again, even if sometimes it scares me, worryin’ what I might do should I lose my head. Especially now we’re headin’ into more battles, yeah?" His voice trembled slightly. "How will it work?"

/Oh./ Because all the sudden, it was the hell of a lot more complicated than the chip.  
  
"I worry, will I forget m’self, or will the soul keep me in check? Will it bugger off and come back after, or is it about the whole time? Couldn't tell, in the last battle."  
  
He was wondering would it be like he was in that basement when the First had control over him, only without an excuse this time.   
  
"It was all over too quick. If it does, will I slip up? Take a life, take blood, go too far? And if I do..." His voice went taut, higher than normal. "...What will become of me when the heat of the moment’s gone? Will the soul be in a mess over it, and you ready to tell me we can’t be anymore?”

She had stripped herself bare. Now it was his turn, and hers to reassure him that his dual nature was as acceptable. “No,” she answered softly, “because you love me. Whatever carnage that side of you seeks out, it’ll be for the benefit of the long-game. And if there are small mistakes in… calculation…” It was a gentle way to word some of the dumbass shit his demon-side could get up to. “I know you, Spike. I’ll either catch you halfway and remind you not to be an idiot, or we’ll deal. Though... I think it's a long shot that it'll work that way. I bet it's more gonna be like before, but with more freedom. It's not like you have soul-amnesia when you're in fight, right?” She gave him some serious side-eye. "You don't when we have sex with a side of biting. Do you?"

He grunted sourly. "Be a right wanker if I couldn't remember _that."_  
  
"Alright, then."

They paused for a moment before they made for the homestretch, and Spike sighed heavily. “S'pose it's a good thing the instinctive bit of me was havin’ a long lie-in till now ‘cept when I’m takin’ in a bit of blood, or we’re in a fine rut. Gave us some time to get used to the business.” He narrowed his eyes at the sky then, expression vaguely unnerved. “Training wheels for if we ever do get home, as well. Though, wonder how it’ll be, there. You, so much more aware of how you tick, and me with this whole new version of m’self. Whole bloody side of meself so soddin’ relaxed here on home ground I can barely prod the bugger awake. But there…”

“By the time we get home, I might be glad the vacation’s over,” Buffy admitted. It was strange to give voice to such a sacrilegious thought, but… there it was. Almost as heretical as admitting that she’d deserved some time off in the first place. “I’m not sure I like the weirdness. I mean…” she amended, lightly touching his arm with the knuckles of her occupied hand, “I love it. This time here with you. I feel like we’ve gotten so much closer than I ever thought possible, but… Is it bad that I kind of miss the rush? The… edginess?” It made her sound like some kind of junkie, didn’t it? “You’d think I’d be glad. That it would be nice, that I’d be tired of it after all these years, but it’s what I’m used to. It’s how I work; like I’m a battery there, and here I just don’t… recharge the same way. It’s been a nice vacation, but…”

He eyed her profile with knowing eyes. “This isn’t you.”

She let out a breath and nodded. “Yeah.”

A faint half-smile creased his lips then. “Nice to know that if we do get back, there’s somethin’ to look forward to, innit?”

He had a point, there. “Yeah,” she answered quietly. /Especially now that I’ll have you there by my side to jump in with me. And to jump when it’s over, every time. Or, you know, just to jump when there’s nothing jumping out at us./ Because that had always been a nice perk, and one that she had badly missed in that other world, without him. And, hell; maybe that had contributed to her blah-y, general weariness back home. There was one thing about being a rechargeable battery. If you didn’t have your charging stick close to hand, you kind of slowly ran down after a while.

/Heh. Stick./ 

Maybe she needed a nap.

Well, first things first. They had about twenty things to deal with before they could do naps, much less get home. They were on step one of five hundred on that, so business as usual. Like always, no matter everyone’s general state of humanity or demonity or whatever. So she schooled herself to get to work. /Maybe if we stop at a convenience store before we.../ “What do you think our chances are of finding honey around here?”

Sapphire eyes smiled at her. “Wanna bribe Drugas for a ride?”

“I just had a _bath_, Spike. I’m planning on keeping the benefits for as long as possible. Though…” She frowned a little. “If we have to touch that gross stuff we use to call it over…”

“Plastic gloves. The sort they used for maid service. The bloody things are all over the hotel. One thing we haven’t used much of.”

“Good point.” 

They made it back up the long sweep of Canon Drive in short time, passed the survival book on to Tiny, who immediately began hustling his small crew of demon-girl volunteers into service, his loose-skinned arms flapping with his vehemence. “Alright, ladies! Let’s start making this water drinkable!” His sharp teeth showed in a wide grin under his floppy, dog-like ears as he waved them all to their stations in front of the various large pots and things they’d collected in the kitchens during the interim. “Iodine ready?”

He really, really reminded her of Clem. Like a happy, gay chef, stuck in his element. “Uh, Tiny?”

“Yeah, Mistress?”

That ‘mistress’ thing really sometimes gave her the wig, but she was going to have to get past it, around here. “You have any of those yellow gloves down here? The cleaning-type ones?”

“Oh. Yeah. In that cupboard over there by the sinks.”

As in, the one place with no one stationed by it, because the sinks had no water. Made total sense. “Thanks.”

She rummaged. Grabbed a pair. And as she and Spike made their escape to leave them to it, she whispered in his ear, “So, um… Are all Loose-Skinned guys kind of gay?”

Spike grinned at that as he made his turn toward the stairs. “It’s a product of their society, yeah? The Loose-Skinned females tend to drive. They’re the real movers and shakers, since the Loose-Skinned males carry the babes. Like sea-horses. The eggs get planted in their skin-folds, and they carry them till they hatch, then…”

Buffy held up one hand to forestall any further graphics. “Forget I asked.” Though, now she thought about it, it was actually kind of refreshing. 

***

A few minutes and one discarded glove later they were holding out one of the three ‘honey-bears’ they’d grabbed from the very defunct and smelly Beverly Hills Market, and Drugas was, despite its reservations, suddenly extremely willing to give them a lift over to Santa Monica.

That thing was a freaking slave to honey. Bro’os needed to watch out for that. He was going to straight-up lose his champion of anyone had a vat of it somewhere.

Within minutes they were being set down—actually fairly gently—in the throne room of the seaside palace in Santa Monica, and Drugas was calling out in its high, reedy voice, “Bro’os! Visitors!”

“Showtime,” Spike murmured to her. She nodded, wondering just how exactly to best intimidate their wayward loan-shark of an ‘ally’.

Spike grinned then, and nodded toward the throne. Moved to drape himself theatrically over it, as if taking over. “You wanna be my Champion, pet?”

He was such a dork sometimes. But it would probably work, so she stepped in front of him, axe held across her body and at the ready.

“That is the throne of Bro’os…” Drugas began, mildly offended, as their move slowly penetrated its brain, but before it could do anything to stop them the doors swung open and their shark-headed host came swinging in, looking half-anxious and half-magnanimous. 

“Who comes to Santa Monica? I am prepared to welcome, or to mai… ugh!” He recoiled, instantly dropping the theatrical swagger, when he caught a glimpse of Spike lazing in his throne, Buffy standing in front of it looking like a deadly weapon. “I… Um… To what do I owe this… totally unexpected… Drugas, you didn’t tell me our dear friends from Beverly Hills were planning on…”

“Oh, Teeth-y, my friend… You’ve been playing two sides of the game, haven’t you?” Spike interrupted the scared ramble, looking patiently deadly.

He was actually pretty good at that. Buffy was fairly proud of him.

“I… Ah…”

“We hear you’ve been making deals with Burge and Compton.” Buffy was a little less affable as she slapped her axe-head against her hand. Actually, she thought her delivery downright merciless.

Bro’os recoiled. “Uh, see, the thing is…”

“Probably Century City too?” She glanced over at Spike, as if looking for confirmation.   
  
“Considering our friend in the Shroud is nipping at his heels, he probably thought it was his best bet to get out of losing everything. And no doubt the idea of allying himself with a monster like Burge seemed like a good idea at the time…” Spike turned his sharp gaze back on the now clearly sweating shark-demon. “Though who would go against the crew who just took out WeHo is beyond me.”

“Okay, listen,” Bro’os exclaimed, flipper-hands now held up in a completely conciliatory way. “I was just stuck, you know? Burge came at me. Said he’d gobble me up like a fish pie if I didn’t join ‘em, and Compton…” He shuddered. “Do you know what he _is?”_

Buffy exchanged a quick, curious glance with her guy. It sure would be nice to get the 411 on that one. “Can’t say that we do, Teeth.”

“He’s a damn Mind-Tangler! Tentacles out to here…” He waved the little flipper-deals around, ducking his shark-head in an approximation of a guy flailing hands around the top of his scalp. “You know, Medusa-demon? The females turn you to stone, but the males… Just one of those brain-tentacles touches you and you’re his slave forever. Easy to tell why he runs pretty much everything south of Downtown, completely unimpeded. Whole army of zombies at his beck and call; humans, demons…”

/God. That sounds lovely./ Just the thought of it gave Buffy the worst kind of wiggins. “And we thought Kurg was bad.”

“Oh, a Grellan’s good, but a Tangler… They would’ve just used him on me if I didn’t comply. So, yeah. I went with it.” The dark, emotionless eyes shot to theirs, and still somehow managed to convey terror and frantic assurance. “I was still gonna try to find a way to work it to your advantage, though, I promise…”

“Oh, yeah, Teeth. I just bet you were. Weren’t gonna just hope that Burge and this Tangler and Burbank and the rest wouldn’t solve your problem for you? Get us off your back so you could live free and clear over here on your beach without us in your hair…”

Not that he had hair.

“No. No! Seriously. Look! I have an idea!” He moved a step closer to them, then hesitated. 

“What?” Buffy asked, beginning to get seriously irritated at the dithering idiot. She kind of just wanted to chop off his head and get it over with.

He sort of hovered near them, just out of axe range, eyes cutting from her to Spike and back again. “Um… I just kind of thought that maybe if I got on their good sides I could work something from the inside, you know? Be your eyes and ears, or maybe…”

Spike was clearly unconvinced. “Thin, Teeth. And no offense, but I trust you about as far as you could throw a whale…”

He was interrupted by an outraged screech from Drugas. They all whirled in time to see Cordelia the dragon backwinging to land on the deck of the bright, orange-lit hotel restaurant’s outdoor seating area. The giant beast took up the entirety of the al fresco dining area. “Actually,” Angel countered, swinging off its massive back, “having a man inside might not hurt.” And he reached up to unbuckle something that looked like a longish, wooden box from the dragon’s spine. 

“Angel? What the bloody fuck are you doing here?”

Buffy would like to know the same thing. “Were you following us? Keeping tabs on what we’re doing?”

His dark eyes gleamed as he shot her a quick look, then settled his gaze on their shark-headed host. “Nah. I just really wanted to meet the Demon-Lord of Santa Monica, so when I saw you two going past on one of my patrols I thought, hey. Why don’t I follow along and see what’s the what?”

“Yeah. I just bet.” Spike sounded deeply suspicious, and kind of weary from where he now sat bolt upright on Bro’os’ throne.

“You two, uh, know this guy?” Bro’os asked tentatively.

“Oh, yeah; we go way back, right Buffy? Spike?”

Buffy sighed and lowered her axe. “Yeah, way back.” /And sometimes he can be even more irritating than Spike; which is saying something./

“Yeah. The bastard’s my sire, in a way.”

“Oh. Oh! Another vampire, is it? Well, welcome, welcome…” Bro’os was now looking seriously overwrought. “So, ah, what’s in the lockbox?” he nattered on, backing away a little with eyes riveted on said item.

Buffy frowned, watching her ex approach. “We could ask the same.”

“Oh, this?” Lifting the thing a little, Angel came close enough to set it down in front of Spike before the throne and straightened, grinning easily. “That’s the reason behind today’s little meeting of minds.” He nodded at the tiny casket like a kid praying someone would ask to open his present first, clearly way too pleased with himself. “I like to think of it as the toy surprise.”

Spike eyed him sourly. “Well. You’re just full of fun today, Peaches.”

“Yeah, well, I think I’ve found us a way out of the upcoming war, so…” He bounced—actually bounced—on his heels, hands in his pockets.

Buffy hadn’t seen Angel do such a ‘kid at Christmas’ impression since… Well, ever, really. It was weird.

On the other side of them, Bro’os started forward, nervously. And stopped abruptly when Buffy left her station in front of Spike to move in between him and the box, axe held loose and at the ready. “Uh, don’t cut my head off, okay,” he muttered, looking unnerved, “but what…”

“I’ll show you,” Angel supplied, and stooping with a grace Buffy recalled with a faint echo of her old attraction, began murmuring what sounded like a complicated spell over the box. “It’s a magickal lock,” he informed them in between phrases. “It’s a little tricky…”

In the end he had to work the spell over the lock about four times before he got it right. Obviously her ex was no mage. Buffy was just about ready to start chopping the chest open manually, but refrained only because she knew that he was probably taking so long mostly because she was there standing over his shoulder, oozing impatience and interfering with his ability to put on a good show. 

He finally did get it open, though, and opened it to reveal a bunch of swirly, bronze-y, scepter-looking things nesting in a bed of crushed velvet. “Ta-da!” he exclaimed with a broad gesture, and stepped back, clearly very proud of himself.

Buffy was confused. “Um… okay. What are those?”

“Hagen shafts.” 

“To be sure,” Spike answered blandly. “Sorry we asked.” He leaned forward then, expression mildly irritated. “And just the what the bloody hell are those, then?”

“Rare artifact from the Kimbios dimension. A demon can use it to commit suicide but still look pretty fantastic afterward. The book said they used to use ‘em on Kimbios as part of this cult of ritual self-sacrifice…” 

/I don’t get it./ 

“That’s bloody fantastic, mate. How’s that supposed to help us?”

Angel stared at them both as if they’d lost their minds. “Thought they might come in handy in the war, you know? I figure we can use them against Burge and the rest. Tell ‘em they’re a weapon or something? Against you and your people, maybe? And then when they set them off they’ll kill _themselves_ instead.” At their continued blank expressions all his bright, childlike energy fled, and he crossed his arms defensively. “Well, _I_ thought it was a pretty good idea.”

“Where the hell did you even get ‘em?” Spike demanded, staring down into the box, and reached out with one finger.

Angel slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch them, you idiot!”

“Oi! _You_ did, to get ‘em here!”

“Yeah, well I’m not…” He halted abruptly, biting off his words as if they were poison, eyes flickering over to Bro’os. “I used… uh… gloves.”

Mixed company. Right. “If you need to touch ‘em, have Buffy do it.” His eyes flickered over to hers, dark and serious. “They won’t hurt you. You’re human…”

/Ish./ Probably it counted for something like this, if the things shot for blood and not ‘essence’. /Forgive me if I’m not ready to take that chance./

Looking away from her now fully-human ex, she met the eyes of her much more susceptible lover. “What happens if, um, a vamp…”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Angel counseled blandly. “I mean, supposedly it takes a while holding ‘em to set ‘em off, but just in case.” He shot Spike a faintly instigating glance. “Not that I’d mind if you wanted to take a risk, but we need you in this war, so…”

“Aw. Bloody fond of you too, Peaches.” Spike grinned mirthlessly over at a visibly quailing Bro’os. “Wanna give us a demonstration of how the things work?  
  
A very oily smell suddenly filled the room. Buffy wondered if that was the smell of shark-sweat, or if Bro’os had soiled himself. “Uh, I’d prefer to decline, gentlemen, Slayer...”

“Where did you get these?” Buffy asked, feeling like she should clarify that much at least before things got any more interesting. “I mean, if they were just laying around this dimension, then the local demons probably already know how they work, which means…”

Angel was grinning again. It was freaking her out. “Got ‘em off eBay,” he quipped sardonically. “Twelve-ninety-eight apiece, plus shipping. A steal.”

Spike snorted mirthlessly, which led Buffy to believe Angel had most likely dug them out of some deep storage at Wolfram and Hart. Made sense, she supposed, since there was really no other reason he could expect that demons like the lords against whom they wanted to use them might never have heard of them…

/Wait./ 

Swinging around to face her ex squarely, she narrowed her eyes. “So… if you planned to bring this, you weren’t actually just on a joy-ride. You wanted to meet us here and get this package to Bro’os.”

Angel’s face fell slightly, then picked up again. “Okay, so I had an ulterior motive.” But then he started grinning again, clearly pleased as punch. “Aren’t they pretty, though?”

With a helpless glance at a scornful Spike, Buffy stared down into the box. The rods were actually kind of beautiful, in a clearly-evil way. They had a sort of regal intensity pounding through them, each of them veined all up the shafts with a sort of pulsing tracery of swirly, crystalline stuff that put off a kind of wild, murky, obviously deadly vibe that crested in a kind of generator-deal at the top of each shaft; like a sort of insane Tesla-coil of annihilation. 

To a demon they’d no doubt feel like power. Like might.

To Buffy they just felt like pending destruction, sitting there, which... “One problem. How are we going to convince the DLs to use them?”

“Ah…” Here, Angel’s invention seemed to fail him, and he fell silent.

Spike spoke up then, voice rough. “Here’s how,” he answered, and came to his feet to stand forbiddingly behind close to their very apprehensive host. “We’re gonna take our mate Bro’os up on his offer. We’ll have him hand them out to his new pals at the next big demon-lord powwow…”

Bro’os moaned like someone had stabbed him in the heart… wherever his heart was.

“And he’s gonna be holding one too. All convincing-like. And if he wants to save his own arse, he’ll just have to drop his at the last minute; same way he’s so good at switching sides at the right moment.” 

“You can’t ask me to do that! It’s suicide! Literally.”

“It won’t work otherwise.” There was no room for compromise in Spike’s voice.

“I… I’m not…”

“How about this,” Buffy intervened, and slipped the axe in between them with a deadly-sweet smile. “You go present the idea to your new friends now, and you play your part when the time is right… or you can just sleep with the fishes right now and not have to worry about any of this at all.”

She thought she heard Angel’s snort of laughter before Spike’s voice broke over her shoulder, incredulous. “Bloody hell, Buffy, ‘sleep with the fishes’? This dimension is having a serious effect on your quipping mojo.”

She ignored him, since her threat seemed to be having its effect on their shark pal, shaky quippage or no. “So. What do you say?”

“I’ll play my part.” His round, black eyes cut up to hers, fearful of the axe still hanging over his head. Past it to Spike hovering over her shoulder, and Angel beyond him, looming large and dark and dangerous. “Where… would you put me in the new order, after?”

Spike shot Buffy a silent question. She shrugged. The ex loan-shark was as untrustworthy as Willy had been, and that was saying something. She’d rather just keep him out of things if they could. “Yeah, well,” Spike answered in the end, “I’m sure we can see to it you at least keep your bit of waterfront property when it’s all over.” Which made sense, since the idiotic demon clearly was in over his head with the whole ‘take territory and try to rule it’ thing. “Just stick to the plan… or Buffy will find some creative way to kill you very, very slowly.”

That earned Buffy an extremely terrified look. It was actually impressive how much the stumpy, shark-ish body could shrink inside that ill-fitting, broad-shouldered slice of Armani.

She hefted the axe with slightly more theatrical flair than was necessary, if only to drive the point home, then turned away, leaving the broken Lord of Santa Monica huddled to one side of his throne and watching them fearfully.

/Now that that’s taken care of…/ Tilting her head to draw both former and current lovers to one side of the room, Buffy called the meeting to order. “Well. Not that I’m impressed with you hovering around behind us like that, Angel, but I have to admit, that was kind of useful.”  
  
“I thought you’d like it.”

“Yeah, but would it kill you to get in touch first? Maybe let us all agree on a plan beforehand?” Spike sounded aggrieved. 

“I didn’t have _time!”_ Angel protested. “I found them just this morning. I spent half the day reading up on how to work the things. I was heading up to show them to you when I saw you two flying by dangling from a couple of bat-claws. I thought Cordelia and I could help rescue you if you were being captured by some demon…”

“Actually, being carried around by Drugas is starting to become kind of a regular occurrence,” Buffy answered sunnily. “But thanks for the rescue attempt.”

“Yeah, well; what are friends for?”

Spike had his eyes on their friend Bro’os. “Do you think we can trust Teeth to hold up his end? Not sure I like leaving the things here with him. Might sell us out.”

Angel followed his gaze. “I dunno. He looks scared to death of Buffy.” He looked inordinately proud of her as he turned back. “Not that I blame him. We all know there aren’t a lot of Sunnydale demons that’d cross her if they know what’s good for ‘em.”

“Not a few here in Hell-A learnin’ that lesson,” Spike answered, equally admiring. 

One thing they had always had in common; they never spared any expense in praising her. It was kind of embarrassing, actually. “I hope you’re right,” she deflected, a little less confident nowadays in the loan-shark’s constancy than she had been at first. “He already double-crossed us once.” Her eyes caught Spike’s. “So. Home?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Spike turned and caught Bro’os in a firm glare. “We expect a full progress report from your mate Drugas within a few days, yeah?” he called. “So get to handin’ over the shafts. And sell the story.”

“Yeah. Um, sure. Of course.”

Buffy watched him grimly and patted the axe in her palm, as if contemplating how many shark-tooth necklaces she could make from his face. “No tricks.”

Shining black eyes, cutting to her occupied hands and filled with absolute dread. “No tricks.”  
  
“Right then. We’re off. Be good, Teeth.”

They turned back with Angel toward the deck. He moved to swing aboard his dragon, then paused, almost tentative. “You, uh, want a ride back?”

Buffy exchanged glances with Spike. It would probably be a lot safer than asking for a lift from Drugas, who probably didn’t like them much anymore. It might drop them on the way back in an attempt to solve its master’s problems for him. Probably the days of the bat-demons bringing them human survivors were over, too… which sucked, but thems were the breaks. Maybe the tradeoff would pay off if they managed to kill all the demon lords who were making all those human lives such utter hell.

Spike was scowling, clearly less than fond of the idea of sitting behind her while she clung to Angel—or, vice-versa—but he wasn’t dumb. He knew the other way lay death. And it was a hell of a long walk home. 

So, of course, they accepted the lift. And all the way back he kept his fingers folded very firmly in her belt. And she kept hers folded very firmly in Angel’s, and tried not to think of how familiar he smelled and how many memories his scent brought back in her mind, because brains were stupid. And she was probably as grateful as Spike was by the time they landed back on the roof of the Pink Palace. 

“I’ll send word when it looks like the armies are settling in at some specific staging area,” Angel told them in light tones as he turned Cordelia and prepared her for the dropoff.

“Yeah. Lookin’ forward to it.”

“Thanks for the ride,” Buffy called after him as he fell away.

And was utterly unsurprised when Spike dragged her inside to have territorial demon sex with her promptly after the dragon was, what? Ten, fifteen feet away from the building?

***  
  
  
  
:-)


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's short and sweet, but has much purpose. Hopefully it still fulfills. :-) Largly fluffy, feel-good stuff, plus smut. Maybe a tiny bit of reflexive angst in the name of past concerns, but mostly, the mood is warm and loving goodness. Hopefully it's a nice pickmeup as our kids head into war.

They had another visit from Cordelia the dragon a few days later—regular days, not dimensional days—letting them know that Burge and the other demon lords seemed to be ramping up their schedule and that there had been a significant uptick in troop movements. They sent back a note updating Angel about their own preparations for the upcoming battle, since that was sounding like more and more of a sure thing these days. “He didn’t mention whether Lorne’s going to join the fight,” Spike mentioned somewhat regretfully as he closed the missive. They had in the meantime made another run to the reservoir and gotten themselves and the safehouse as stocked up with water as it was possible to get in the short-term—Conner had done a run in the interim for more iodine to clean the stuff up—so they were all in pretty decent shape again, if the lake itself was a little lower. 

What they would do here once that source ran out was a whole other question, since Buffy kind of doubted that it was ever going to rain in Hell. “I mean, Lorne kind of seems more like a lover than a fighter, huh?” she asked, moving closer to her guy to slide her fingers firmly into his hair. With all the lack of showers and hair-care supplies it was basically loose and curly all the time now, and she was kind of alright with that. He looked mussed and gorgeous and… suggestive. Yeah, maybe not so much with the ‘edgy vamp’ thing, and sometimes it clashed with the look he was going for with the eyeliner when they went out to kick butt. But privately? 

Okay, the thing was, when he’d come back in his ‘costume’ to play Mr. Not Crazy for her, she had said he’d had ‘better hair’, but that had been more about his having ‘public hair’. Slicked down, disciplined. Spike-about-town. The Spike everyone else got to see.

The curly thing was how it looked after sex. It was hers. It was private. 

It was bedroom hair.

Hence, when he’d been down in the school basement looking all tormented, she had kind of been majorly distracted by the cognitive dissonance of a fully-clothed Spike with curls. She had never previously seen him with bedroom hair when he wasn’t naked and thoroughly debauched, and it had struck her in that moment just how different and amazing his hair had looked with his button-down. For a minute. 

Maybe two. 

Three, tops.

Okay, so she spent a lot of time lately with her hands in his hair. There were no lawyers left here in LA to sue her over it, so she was safe. And anyway, it was hers. All hers, dammit.

It sent certain messages to her brain, was the thing. Crossed the wires.

As she unconsciously carded her fingers through the recalcitrant strands, he lifted his head to regard her with one of those knowing expressions in his sky-colored eyes. The amusement there forced her to stop rummaging around on his scalp, and she smiled a little, gazing shamelessly into the cobalt depths. There was no blue in the sky here, so really, this was the only place left she could see that color. “What? You know, it’s really unfair that you don’t sweat.”

“Oh, I sweat, luv. You can _definitely_ make me sweat.” 

/Well, I mean, that’s a whole other kind of…/ “You know what I mean.”

He touched his tongue to the roof of his mouth, shot a quick side-eye at the letter. “I was just thinking. Sounds like everyone’s still in the prep stages of all this war business. Movin’ people around and all that. Not ready to attack yet, yeah?”

“Okay?”

He slipped an arm around her waist and hauled her a little closer, causing her to eye him with some suspicion. “Which means it’ll probably be a coupla days before we have to go marchin’ off to war. After which we’ll probably be all mucked up again, yeah?”

“Probably.” She viewed the prospect with a certain distaste. /So long, bath./

“So…” And he gave her a very recognizable leer. “You wanna make use of it while we still can?”

She felt her insides curl up and tighten in anticipation. There really just hadn’t been a whole lot of time, what with all the arrangements and the organizing, and… And she missed him. Like, a _lot_. And for the first time in a couple of weeks she felt comfortable with a lot of things that were a lot less straightforward than… Well, they got the job done, but, you know. 

He began to smirk. Because he could hear her heart and smell her body and all that irritating vampire crap that said he already knew the answer before she had to say anything. Not that he would touch her before she said something confirm-y… and dammit, she was going to have to say buhbye to that bath a lot sooner than whenever they did this war thing. 

But this? Was for so much of a better cause. “Just get over here.”

He already had her off her feet and on her back on the floor, was already growling. “Christ, I’ve missed your quim, you mad bird…” Had her clothes half off, and god, what had she been _thinking_…

“…Get bloody plumbing installed just for you; you could make a man sack of hammers just standing there lookin’ like you do, was about ready to set a pipeline from that bloody lake down to here with my own hands, nearly went clean off my trolley with you next to me all the time like some wild animal I couldn’t bed…”

She snorted with mirth at the low mutters addressed to her navel and parts south; but the laughter cut off abruptly and she arched upward with a gasp when he found her, still growling. “You could… always… I just couldn’t…” 

She caught very little of his inchoate reply, mostly lost in what he was doing, though one mumbled, “…Insane…” made it through.

“You know I… missed your mouth…” she managed in a whisper, and caught his hair with one hand, basically in order to hold on for dear life, because oh. My. God.

He cut off—/No!/—to lift up and regard her balefully with blue eyes tinged with amber. “Madwoman,” he informed her bluntly, and went right back to what he’d been doing. Thank god… and she was already… Already…

“Spike, God, I can’t…”

Two sure fingers thrust very abruptly into her, and /Fuck!/ She was over the edge that fast, keening and scrabbling for purchase, and yeah, so that had ended quickly. But, okay, her body had gotten used to regular servings of Spike on a platter, and then had very suddenly been put on a starvation diet. She supposed it could be forgiven for the confusion, and for taking what it could get as fast as possible. “Sorry…” she jolted, still clenching a little on the intruding digits. Which were, quite clearly, hers forever now.

He chuckled and drew in a deep, savoring breath, voice low and hoarse with satisfaction. “I’m not. You’re bloody good for my ego.”

“Oh. Okay. Well…” Her spine was alight with sparkling energy; a nice compliment to his vamp-tingles. She felt like one of those Christmas trees with the alternating blinky-lights. “I’ll make up for it next time.”

“I bloody well hope so,” he told her, and pushed up on his elbow to eye her with a kind of fierce determination that was frankly worrying. “I intend to see to you till you can’t walk. Can’t talk for screaming. Consider this your fair warning.”

Alright, but… “That sounds great on paper, Spike, but I could use about five…” His fingers twitched inside her, and she fought the urge to curl up around him, maybe kick a little. “Seriously, maybe ten…”

With lifted brow, he lowered his head and touched her clit extremely lightly with just the tip of his tongue, and you know what? Actually…

She relaxed a little. “When you put it that way…”

She thought she heard an amused rumble, which was rude and unfair, but then his tongue did the thing again, and she forgot to be irritated. “Um, okay, maybe if you…”

“Always takes a bit of convincing for you, Slayer, before you remember, innit?”

“Mmm? Can you do more of that? That was nice.”

He settled in, his tones turning poetic. “Study in contrasts,” he murmured, spreading her open with his free hand and slipped his mouth back to its suspended task. Which was good, because she was going to have to threaten him soon if he didn’t get back to it. 

It was a while later before she realized what the hell he’d been yapping talking about. And she might not have even picked it up if she hadn’t spent so much time with him in hell, where everything was upside-down. But it really was weird, wasn’t it? 

The vampire who had turned the Slayer from a fighter to a lover. Just like hell had turned them into a couple, and, yeah. 

Nothing about them was anything but a study in weird irony. And right now, she was really very much okay with that. 

As long as it worked.

***

“Do you honestly mean to tell me that they didn’t show you this one in a bleedin’ poetry course?”

Spike wasn’t fooling her. He had gone into hyperdrive with cramming in as much loving bonding as he could while they had the chance, before the battle kicked off. He was as transparent as a snow-globe… but she wasn’t about to complain, because she got it. It was getting harder and harder to stare into the endless face of war with him, now that they had so much to lose. “Well, maybe they didn’t get that far?” she pointed out, playing along. “I mean, the professor spent a lot of time talking about different types of poetry first. The three-line ones from Japan were really snappy…”

“Bloody Haikus?” He looked mildly offended. “I mean, yeah; they have a certain elegance, but… Yeats, Buffy!”

“Okay, so I get what he’s saying when he’s talking about things falling apart and all that. I’ve been there. He’s basically talking about the apocalypse, right?”

Spike scrubbed his hand through his hair, turning it into a pale, disordered mass. “I mean, yeah. In a way. There’s a lot of historical garbage in it too, since every time you turned around people were sure that Christ was coming and the End Times were on them and all that rot. _‘Twenty centuries’_ and that. Every time some political rubbish went down, or there was a problem with the Church or some other soddin’ thing, clearly it was a sign that the whole Heavenly Host was en route.”

Buffy shrugged. “I mean, they probably weren’t wrong. In my experience, there’s an apocalypse just about every Tuesday.” 

That earned her a snide look. “Not everyone lived on a hellmouth, Buffy.”

She stabbed a finger down on the page of his fancy poetry anthology. “Clearly this Yeets guy did. Look at the lingo. Anarchy, loosed on the world, blood tides, ceremonies, innocence being drowned…” She raised her eyes to his, triumphant. “Pretty sure if he wasn’t on an English hellmouth somewhere then he at least walked in on some demons doing a ritual involving drowning babies in blood.”

“Oh, bleedin’ hell. It’s metaphorical, luv.”

“For all _we_ know,” she countered immediately. “I mean, the part about conviction sounds totally like when…” She stopped and sighed, touching the page with suddenly reluctant fingers. 

“When that lot of infants kicked you out of your own bloody house, is it?” His voice, too, had gone tight in memory.

“Well…” She managed a hurt little shrug for that old badness. “The First sure had all the passionate intensity and we didn’t right about then.”

Spike set the book aside. “I dunno, pet,” he managed evenly. “I never felt anything change.”

/No. You wouldn’t./ Her hand tightened on his thigh. “That’s why you saved me,” she whispered. “Because you gave it back to me when I lost mine." 

To her surprise, he looked abruptly pained, his eyes sharp and liquid on hers. “‘Bout time I did, since I couldn’t manage to do it up on the Bitch’s tower.”

/Oh./ “Hey.” Releasing his leg, she caught his hand, and his attention. “But you did save me. You know that, right? Later, with Sweet? I’d have burned up if you hadn’t stopped me. So I think you made up for it.” /Hence the kissies. And, you know. Stuff. Since you had to go making people feel all alive and crap, dancing on the verge of death with me./ It was only there that she had ever really felt so, in those days. Hence her addiction to him. Or, well… That was what she had thought, at the time. /Playing with fire and all that crap. Wanting to feel. Like skydiving, only on vamp-cock. Except with bonus emotions I was in no way feeling, because flirting with the emotions was not even remotely a part of the ‘feeling’ I was doing. Of course not./

/God, Buffy, you were such an idiot./

Her observation seemed to take him aback. And then a new, fierce light kindled in his eyes. “S’pose there’s room for redemption in every day,” he murmured. But his voice was rough; maybe with relief. And she hoped that that haunted look she had seen in his eyes a few years back might finally fade a little, the ‘Every night I save you’ might begin to drift away. 

After a moment or two she tore her eyes away to pull the book back, determined to get through his thing with the poem. He seemed so sure it was apropos to their current situation. “So. What about this has anything to do with our upcoming war?”

He shrugged, having clearly lost interest. “Yeah, well. You know. Apocalyptic battles. Something huge coming to destroy everything. The ‘rough beast’…” He watched as she scanned the rest of the poem, then caught the tome from her querying fingers and turned the pages idly, flipping them. 

“I liked the image,” she tried, tentative. “Kind of scary.”

“Mmm. Suddenly I’m more in the mood for cummings. Here.” And he thrust the book back toward her, abrupt and oddly fitful.

She eyed him uncertainly, wondering what was up. “You’re not going to start singing, are you? Because if you are, I’m okay with it. I mean, God knows I miss music…”

That earned her a sharp glare, and she smirked as she turned her gaze to the words on the page. And said the first thing that came to mind, because that was how her brain-mouth circuit worked. “Okay, how are you supposed to be able to understand what this guy is saying, if he can’t even use periods?”

That earned her a lazy Spike-smile; one that told her he had expected the protestation. “Cummings is famous for his lack of punctuation, pet. He hated full-stops, liked jamming words together for effect. Wager he did it to show the way thoughts will slam into each other when they connect.” He reached out, brushed the page with the tips of his fingers. They looked odd to her, these days, without their habitual coating of dark nail-polish. “How we run from one thought to another. Stream-of-consciousness, like?”

“Hm.” She made another, more serious stab at it, frowning in concentration. And realized pretty quickly that it was a love poem. And even more quickly why Spike had chosen to show her this one. 

_‘I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart) I am never without it…’_ It was basically like something he would try to write about her_. ‘…and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling…’ _Because she wasn’t stupid. Whether she used to try to pretend it wasn’t true, that was basically his entire ethos, and had been since pretty much the day he’d moved out of Xander’s place to go back to his crypt and haunt her every step back in Sunnydale. _‘I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) I want no world (for beautiful you are my world…’_

She lifted her eyes to his, saw him watching her with those expressive ones, quiet and expectant. “Oh,” she said quietly.

“Yeah. Cummings is a right bastard for being able to say all the things I can’t quite get down and have ‘em make sense.” He reached out once more to caress the page, a faintly ironic smile touching his lips. “Though I s’pose it wasn’t a secret for long, yeah?”

She watched his fingers slide across the typescript. _‘Here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud…’ _Touched his hand to still it. “I carried you in my heart too, or I wouldn’t have let you get even as close to me as you did.” She could admit that truth now, in retrospect, whether she had been able to then or not. That she had trusted him from the start, on some level. That she had had to have believed that he loved her, or she could never have let herself go to bed with him. Especially knowing that he could hurt her. Hell; the risk had added to the thrill, but she would never have gone that far without the trust, turn-on or no. Yes, she had known she could handle herself with him… /But eventually you have to be vulnerable during sex. I couldn’t be vigilant all the time. I was dumb to pretend to myself that I didn’t trust him./ 

At some point you had to let go. 

She had known he loved her, whatever she might have said; knew he wasn’t going to hurt her, trusted him enough to relax and let him take her to places no one else ever had. That was why it had been such a betrayal when she had said a no she had actually meant, and hadn’t been heard. It had never once occurred to her before then—not truly, whatever her protestations—that that trust might ever be broken. /And you took it as confirmation of all your most idiotic bigotry, when it was all a giant misunderstanding./

Hell, on some instinctive level she must have trusted him even before he was chipped, or else she would have disinvited him from her life and barred the mystical door after their short truce. And yet, somehow, she had believed he would never harm her mother; had come back to town and let herself believe he would never return to bother them, and left that metaphorical door wide open. /I only slammed it in his face when he threatened me with… gasp! _Feelings_. God, Buffy, you’re such a predictable dope./

There was always something rooted deep in between them, since they had fought side by side the first time. Maybe since their first fight, that day in the school, long ago, or even the first time he had seen her, whenever that was. Something that had grown to this. “Carrying you in my heart scared the hell out of me. I couldn’t admit it then.” She offered a smile, cupped his face. “But I can now.”

Hints of past pain cleared from his eyes, like clouds scattering in the sun. “I love you, Buffy.”

She slipped her hand down along his arm to his hand, dropping her eyes as she cupped his over her own cheek. It was the night before another battle. Another war. It had her stomach in knots. The last time they had done this, tried to love each other before a fight…

She couldn’t think of that. Couldn’t think of losing him, and the agony of those long, empty months. A year without him, thinking him dust. Proud, but alone; blowing with the wind like she, too, had become light and formless as ashes, along with him… and just as lost of purpose. 

Meeting his adoring gaze with all the ferocity she could muster, she glared fiercely into those ridiculous blue eyes; because he had to know. He had to _believe_ it. “I know. And I love you, okay? I believed it then, and I want you to believe it now.” Her voice cracked, shook around the lump forming there. No time for tears. “Do you?”

He heard them anyway. “Yeah,” he whispered, and drew her in.

“Good.” She kissed him, before he could get away. 

/Not this time, buster. This time, you _stay _with me./ 

* * *  
  
  
  
  
  
End of Month 3 in Hell-A. And now we head into the big, climactic month (and change). Hold onto your britches, everyone. Things get hairy from here on out.  
  
Thank you, every one of you, for being here.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Month Four in Hell-A!

**Month IV:**

**S: **

They marched into war on their ‘ninety-fifth’ day in Hell. Burge and his allies had amassed all their troops sort of around USC, were using it as a staging area and possible fallback zone. Gave them something of a tactical advantage, but it did one thing for the good guys. It freed up Downtown and gave the Beverly Hills contingent a clear shot to the Wolfram and Hart building, right there in the heart of his territory as it was. That would be _their_ fallback zone in case of siege. Useful, since the sodding place was loaded with spellbooks and magickal artifacts and the like that they could use like the unholy bloody hand grenade against their fell foes.

Angel was, of course, doing his best to live up to his position as a poofy wee host; squiring their girls about, settling everyone in, being all genial to their bitty, traumatized Slayers—nice way to get in good with them, considering their general anxiety around vamps, and him posing as one still—and overall acting like a ponce. 

The old tosser and Buffy remained pleasant toward one another, but otherwise generally stayed out of each other’s way save when it came to coordinating. Illyria avoided him as well, but that was more Spike’s doing than anything, since to his mind they needed to keep her in fighting fettle, which meant managing her exposure to people who triggered her to go into her ‘Fred-state’. Hopefully the sod had told Oxford to keep his ghostly arse scarce. 

Luckily, Spike himself seemed not to trigger the business for her as much. Probably something to do with a lack of bloat when it came to memories of him associated with her former life. Bit of a letdown, that, but understandable. Angel, though, the genial git… His very presence was making it necessary for Spike to stand back all the more, be less of a partner to Buffy while all this went down, be more ‘leaderly overseer’ prat. Damn the ponce. The need to administratively babysit their mutable Old One meant he had to leave most of the nitty-gritty organizational stuff to his Champion. 

The fighting couldn’t come on soon enough, damnitall, so he could get on with something that made sense, and leave off acting the fool. He wanted to stand up beside his mate and be sodding useful.

Ever since Angel’s first visit to the Pink Palace, Illyria had been about as dependable as a light bulb with a short. She had spent far too much of her time hiding away in her suite talking to her mummy and a load of dead ferns and the like for them to turn to her for guidance. At this point, between Buffy’s sure leadership voice and his having automatically fallen into their old pattern of unspoken teamwork, it was easy enough to see the way the wind blew for anyone paying the slightest attention. Add in the presence of three twee Slayers, who had made it clear they were beholden to no one but Buffy, and the shaky confidence Spike's nominal co-demon-lord currently inspired in his so-called Spikettes, and it wasn’t surprising that the girls had gone from eyeing his love with clear distaste in week two to throwing their lot in entirely behind her as their war-leader by now, in week thirteen. 

It had been an odd transition; almost invisible at first. As the Smurf began to deteriorate, Buffy had become as much the leader of Beverly Hills as he, if not in name, and in public rather than in private… and thank Christ she was here. Without her, holding it all together on his own would have been harrowing as fuck, he didn’t mind saying. Any road, the whole household was well-aware at this point of how the matter stood, however unspoken the hierarchy was in their bitty principality. Hell; everyone from Gris and Rinne and Maria down to the last demon bint knew it, followed Buffy’s orders as directly as they did his own. Even Ms. Clean had no problems with doing her bidding, and that one was venal as they came, and nothing like a joiner. 

Not a one of the lot wasted any time jumping when Buffy snapped out a command anymore. They just hopped to. 

Christ, she made him hard.

Probably didn’t hurt that the chits knew these days that the mystery ‘human’ who’d been palling about with him acting all demure for however fucking long was actually the Slayer they’d all heard so much about from up north a ways. Had led to a certain amount of awkwardness among the bints, as they had treated her with disdain or suspicion beforehand, some of them, but it hadn’t taken them long to fall in line thereafter. By now they’d all settled into an odd balance somewhere between treating her as they had begun to before knowing that bit of intelligence, and that awareness of her identity creating that instinctive sense of separation that, he knew, pained his love. 

Not that she and the Spikettes had ever all been precisely bosom buddies. They’d all held Buffy a bit apart from them from the start, seeing as she was “Lord Spike’s” mysterious chosen companion of unknown quantity. /It’s only, now she’s a known quantity. And good bloody thing they learned to trust her beforehand, or else all this? Probably would’ve gone to pot./ The lot of them might hold her in a certain wary regard now from a professional, warrior-level… but they would follow her, screaming, into the pit of hell for all that, because she was a fucking Slayer who was for some inexplicable reason fighting at their sides. 

He thought perhaps part of that was, in their minds, because they believed he’d ‘tamed’ Buffy somehow. Rather a laugh, that, since it was so much more the other way about, and him tagging about her heels panting like a puppy since sodding whenever-the-fuck; but let them believe what they wished if it kept them guarding her back. 

Buffy found it amusing, he could tell; especially the bit about how the entire thing had somehow, bizarrely, reinforced his reputation among the chits, made them eye him with even greater awe. ‘The vampire-lord who'd tamed a Slayer to his side’ or some such rot. /All bloody, sodding hail./

Load of bollocks.

_“Don’t worry about it, Spike. It works in our favor. Remember; here you’re the Leader and I’m the Champion, right?”_

_“Rot.”_

_“If we ever get back home, I’ll take it out of your ass?”_

Well, then_. “Hold you to that, Slayer.”_

_“How many decades have you practiced leering like that? Because it should be illegal, you know that?”_

Any road, here they were; him sitting about like a tosser, playing ‘leader’, and yet as the dice would fall, Buffy actually doing it, because it was simply the wonted way of things. She headed up their army, and they worked together figuring out how they’d manage strategy and the like, but she of course fell back into the business of managing their warriors as if she were a needle falling into the deepest grooves of a record… because she’d been doing this since she was a sodding infant. 

It was fucking inspiring… and he’d never wanted this for her. Not here, when she had been so bloody emphatic that she’d wanted the vacation. He rather felt he’d failed her as a supposed ‘leader’ in not doing the job right enough, but… it had sort of come about that way before they’d even realized it was happening. /I’m just too bloody used to doing this sort of thing on my own, or in a pair. Taking care of business. Not… giving out orders and then standing at the head of a sodding army./ Even when he’d had minions, he’d done it all by delegating, and then gone out and done the bits he’d wanted to do the most on his own. When he’d fought in a group it had always been, at most, beside one or two others. Angelus. Dru. Buffy. Not leading a damned platoon. /And I'm absolutely used to deferring to you, Slayer. I may hold your bond, but that means fuck all in practice. You're my sodding general when it comes down to brass tacks, and I'm your lieutenant, and I wouldn't want it any other bloody way. Like water flowing downstream./ He'd given his oath to her, his damned pledge; nothing short of the fealty of heart and being, and that years ago. A little time through the looking glass wasn't like to change that.

/Still, one might think I could pretend a bit, hold up my end for more than a couple of months. I'm supposed to be _adaptable_, for Chrissake./

Still, there it was. Their behavior around each other had spoken for itself, and the chits had read it; had recognized them as, in the very least, equals with a division of labor, with him managing the overall politics, and Buffy stepping in as the clear leader when it came to organizing the sodding troops. His mate may not have asked to lead a load of girls into war again; might have been long done with that mess… but apparently it was fate that she would have to keep doing it. /I’ll be here, though, Love. Always; to put you back together, after./ “You okay?”

“Hm?” She seemed to be only half-listening as she stared out of the high, necro-glass windows and down over the cityscape toward the unseen southwest and the army that lay in wait for them. All they could see of the forces massing at USC were the vast clouds of winged creatures hovering above that segment of the city; many of whom, ‘Cordelia’ had informed them via a mounting anxiety, were dragons.

“Know you didn’t bargain for this whole thing again. Leadin’ the charge.” He gestured out at the field they would have to try to take, soon. “Didn’t ask for it…” 

“I know.” She crossed her arms, staring grimly outward. “But you and Angel need time to work the Lords, make sure Bro’os plays his part. And I _did_ volunteer.” She turned away long enough to shoot him a quick, tiny smile. “Territorial Champion, right?”

“Too bloody right.” But. He touched her arm. “Thing is… I know you hate it. Girls dyin’. Feeling responsible…”

She shrugged a little, arms still wound as tightly around herself as they would go. “They’re tough. And they know the risks. They’re not babies.” She hesitated slightly. “And…” To his surprised concern, a faint shudder appeared to work itself through her frame. “I couldn’t be there. For whatever the Scourge did to the girls back home, so… At least this time, I’m…”

/Oh, bloody hell no./ “Buffy, I don’t want you doing this as some kind of penance because you came to me instead of staying back with your people. If you…”

Her gaze came back to his, haunted but steady. “I’m alright, Spike.” And her tones were firm, leaving nothing to debate. She turned back to the glass, set and ready as he had ever seen her. “We have a job to do.”

If he had seen her like this once, he had seen it a dozen times. She was suppressing all emotion so that she could go to work. And it wouldn’t be fair of him to open her back up on the eve of battle, so he just nodded and let go of her arm. She’d crack after, and need him. And this time he’d be there, like he hadn’t been able to do after the collapse of Sunnydale, what with the whole pesky burning to ash business.

“You just better not die this time,” she murmured as he stepped back, giving her the space. “I had to get through that on my own last time; without you. All the girls I had killed. Everyone we lost. And on top of that… I lost _you_.” Her delivery, monotone as it was, carried under it an inflection of such complete devastation that it damn near brought him to his knees. “It almost killed me. So. This time, you better not die. Because if I lose you again I won’t make it.”

Her flat, frank delivery stood stark between them, and reft his soul. “I’ll be here,” he answered, and had never meant a promise more fervently. “Couldn’t drag me away for anything.” /Never again./ “Couldn’t tear me away with fire, yeah? Never leave you.”

“Okay,” she answered, very quietly, and her tones were those of a woman taking a promise to heart. She would hold him to that for the rest of his days. 

Good thing it was an easy promise for him to keep. 

“Then let’s get to work.”

***

**B:**

The First War for Hell-A began with an all-out dragon assault. They came streaming at Wolfram and Hart in a screaming flood; probably fifty of them, roaring and belching fire. Poor Cordelia was way outnumbered, and fell back to cower down behind her necro-window, shrieking, wing covering her head. The mounted legion crashed hard against the face of the building, shattering the bank of windows at their floor and spraying glass everywhere. While they were all still straightening and blinking their eyes, a whole posse of demons came tumbling off of their mounts through the jagged points of broken glass, and rolled in for the attack. 

Which was, honestly, their first mistake. Because, let’s be real. They’d had the advantage as long as they were riding flaming monsters and were all aerial. Once they were on the ground their own weaponized mounts couldn’t flame their opponents anymore without killing _them_, too, they lost the high ground, and put themselves on even footing with the other side. 

It told her a lot about the planners on the other side of this war. As in, they weren’t. 

They might just win this thing on the grounds of sheer, tactical ability alone. 

Between Illyria’s bright blue energy-punches, the magickal fire-bombs Angel had gathered, Spike going feral demon-boy and fighting like some kind of gorgeous, manic dervish, and everyone else’s general warrior spirit, they made quick work of their fifty or so invaders, sent the whole howling mass of them back to… Well, some other hell, and did a quick count and cleanup. 

They had lost no one in the skirmish. Literally zero casualties. Like, okay. Brenda had a bad cut on one arm—again—and Griselda got a rotten knock on the head that might have rung her bell hard enough to give her trouble for a couple of hours, but really, that was about it. They bound up the cut, kept an eye on Gris for a few to make sure no green blood started oozing from her ears, and called it a win.

“Don’t think we’re going up against any great minds,” Spike pointed out blandly as he set aside his mace. “There’s a plus.” He would have had a bad slice up his right arm, which he’d used to block a sword, but he was wearing leather again; a biker jacket he’d picked up from a Harley Davidson shop on the way over from Beverly Hills, so really all he’d gotten was a scratch that was already healing.

The jacket sleeve was toast, of course. But, just for the record, Spike in a biker jacket? Was okay with Buffy. Like, if they weren’t in a battle, she’d already have him against a wall okay. For one thing, he made all those silver studs look _very_ nice, what with his hair in disarray, and that smudge on his cheek, holding the mace head down on the floor all casual, panting a little as if he needed to. /I could make you breathe hard./ And really, the ensemble would just look nicer on the floor, with him on it and her on him. 

It was all coming together in her mind; a very nice picture indeed, and _god_, she had missed watching him fight like that; next to her, all galvanized and roaring with glee and…

“Yeah, well, maybe it was just a test,” Angel answered, stalking over to the broken windows for a look-see. “Let’s not get cocky.” 

“Attaboy. Always lookin’ at the ruddy bright side.”

Their tiffing was interrupting Buffy’s post-battle sexual fantasies. It was irritating.

“Someone’s gotta keep perspective around here. You’re ready to call it a victory when we’ve only won one small…”

“Will you two _stop_ it?” Buffy demanded, suddenly completely over their bickering. “We don’t have time—and I don’t have the patience—for your stupid man-crap, okay?”

They gaped at her, clearly stunned that she would interfere in their petty war. “Buffy,” Angel complained, “he…”

The irritation rose in her; threatened to strangle. _“No.”_

He cut off like a radio as she turned to Spike. Saw the betrayed look in his eyes. Because he had _told_ her. “I know why,” she answered the look quietly. “Maybe after this, if we get time, we can pull him aside and deal with it. But _not_ now.”

After a moment he nodded and straightened, manfully putting it aside. “Right. Got a war to fight.”

She caught his eye. Held it. “So we’ll go be heroes.” 

“Yeah.” His voice had softened to something only she could hear, and understand. 

“We really did get along a little better before,” Angel tried, quietly, from behind her. “All through this last year, when…” He halted again, as abruptly. 

/When I wasn’t around. It figures./ She would always be the thing between them that precipitated the greatest rivalry, since she highlighted all the rest. “I’m sorry about that,” she answered without removing her gaze in the slightest from Spike’s. “But I’m here, and I can’t do anything about it.”

“Don’t apologize, Buffy. It’s on us. And it’s bollocks anyway.” Disengaging finally, Spike frowned at his grandsire, eyes kindled in a strange fire. “We got on about as well as two strange cats sharin’ a cardboard box.”

“Hey! I told you I liked your poetry!”

That was surprise enough to draw her gaze finally. Angel had paid Spike a _compliment?_

Spike’s snort of dark amusement brought her back to stare at him in confusion. “What?”

“Nothin’. Just, no accountin’ for taste, yeah?”

“Oh, I give up.” Throwing up her hands, she stalked away from them for a while to get some air.

Which was why she wasn’t close enough to save the dragon when the raiding party came.

***

“Cordelia’s been with me since the beginning.” Angel seemed really devastated by the loss of his sentient ride. “Just like its namesake was with me from the start when I came to LA…”

Just wow. He’d gotten seriously attached to that dragon. /Just how lonely were you down here rattling around alone in this lawyer-building?/ She kind of felt bad now about leaving him here to go be with Spike, if it meant he’d lost his mind or something. But only kind of. After all, she knew for a fact that Angel was really, really good at losing his mind a little and coming back from it. He’d kind of made an art form out of it, so she was pretty sure he’d be okay. 

Still, maybe she’d been a little cruel, just taking off like that? Even though it had honestly never occurred to her that it would cause him issues. She’d just never thought he’d have a problem with it. After all, hadn’t he spent, like, most of the last hundred-plus years living by himself?

/Of course, that had turned him into a guy who had no idea how to people when I first met him. I was like his training wheels for communication and human relations or something./ Which, honestly, made a lot of sense in retrospect, and probably it had been just as bad a time for him to start a lifelong relationship as it had been for her. Emotionally he’d been as young as she had been. Huh. Weird to think of that now, at this point. /But since then… I guess he’s had… Well, _people_. Gotten used to a group./ Wes, that guy Gunn, obviously Cordelia. That girl Fred, before she got absorbed by Illyria. The green demon with the voice. Maybe it had changed him?

Maybe her ex was more used to having company than he used to be; which would mean that being alone… was no longer his de facto state. 

/Well, I couldn’t have invited him back to live with us. Imagine the strain it would’ve put on our relationship, for one! Spike would’ve lost his mind within a week. And you know what? No./ She just really, really didn’t like who her guy was around Angel; all hard and defensive and snarky and brittle. /Nope with nopesauce./ 

She liked a Spike she could dig into. She had learned to really love his unguarded side. And she would fight for that no matter what. Which meant… /Sorry Angel. Once again, I’m going to have to pick sides./ “I’m really sorry. And you know we’re going to try to get her back. For one thing, she’s a serious plus for our side. But for right now we’re going to have to focus on what we need to do next to hit back. They have us on the defensive, and that’s a bad way to start a war…”

Angel stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “What, you want to _attack_ them? They have us outnumbered by, what? Ten to one? Plus all the airborne firepower…”

She shrugged a little and glanced outside. “Nightfall’s soon.” /_Finally_./ “Maybe we can get in a sneak-attack or two.” She smiled at no one in particular. “Maybe get your dragon back. Maybe kill a DL. Who knows what we can accomplish under cover of night…”

“It’s when all the fun starts,” Spike agreed, and his hand brushed hers. A gesture of solidarity.

***

Their sneak-attack on the fringes of the USC campus netted them very little in the way of impressive gains, though it got them some useful intel as far as troop dispositions. Armed with Betta George and of the choicer spells Angel had dug out from Wolfram and Hart’s vaults, they managed to sneak past the first rank of red-roofed buildings despite what had to be a number of sentries stationed in high places. 

George was there to convince the sentries that none of them were even there as they slunk by. The spell was to convince them not to see George himself, since it was seriously tough to be stealthy with a giant, floating fish-demon in your party.

Between the telepathic guy with gills and yet another of Angel’s apparently endless rafts of useful incantations—the latter a silencing spell—they also managed to cover up the sounds of their numerous skirmishes with bits of demon army as they penetrated, piecemeal, all the way to the edges of Cromwell field. There, though, they found an entire bivouac of sleeping dragons, and had to literally tip-toe around the verges of the rubber track to avoid detection. 

They hadn’t brought any good dragon-killing spells, sadly. Illyria could maybe have done for a number of them on her own, but she would have woken up the rest—not to mention, you know, half the army, the way she lit up a place with her Mortal-Kombat-style murder-hands, so she had been quietly disinvited from the sortie.

She was their most powerful weapon, yes, but she was not large with the stealth.

Unfortunately, Betta George seemed not to be able to do much with dragon-minds, or so he indicated in a combination of anxious telepathy and finny, fluttering pantomime. They lucked out, however in that apparently dragons slept really heavily, or were super diurnal, because not one of them woke up as the raiding party passed. However… once around the track, they ran smack into a whole camp of very large demons who clearly wouldn’t fit inside the buildings and had thus been relegated to sleeping in a nearby training field. And that… Well. That ended badly, it being kind of a size mismatch. The sortie group were out of really super useful spells by that point, only had a few sort of short-term confusion spells and things that helped, but weren’t wildly damaging. In the end they kind of had to beat a hasty retreat back north. Which, yeah, looked crappy on paper, but they did manage to do away with about half of those big bastards, and to maim a lot of the rest by whacking off a significant number of clawed tentacles, so that was of the good, right? 

They had also penetrated pretty far into the enemy encampment to get the lay of the land, estimate their numbers, and done a decent job of knocking out about, what? Fifty or sixty assorted troops counting the five or six giant demon-things. Not bad for a night’s work.

Of course, once they made it back to base, the counter-assault woke them up from their sleep shifts and kept them up the rest of the night. It seemed that you could, in fact, make dragons nocturnal if you gave them enough motivation… and it also seemed that Burge’s people included enough sorcerers to break through whatever spells Angel had tried to set up around the building. 

The problem with working spells was, if you weren’t actually a powerful spellcaster and didn’t have any serious witches in your army, it was all very paint-by-numbers. The real deal could crack that kind of recipe-driven work like an egg, given time and incentive; and none of them had enough knowledge or innate ability to counter the real guys once they did. 

So, you know… fighty-stuff. And even with someone like Illyria on your side and a magickal arsenal like the one Angel had gathered for this little war, a constant and repetitive siege could wear you down.

The dawn of their thirty-second dimensional day in Hell-A (day ninety-six for those who were still counting) found the rough army at Wolfram and Hart a haggard bunch. A few more wounded than before, and most of them really, really missing out on sleep. They were back on shifts, though Buffy’s turn wouldn’t be for another few hours. She felt a little too keyed up to crash yet anyway, so she just sat staring out at basically nothing with that tight, achy feeling behind her eyes while stroking occasionally at the curls beneath her hands. 

Spike lay with his head in her lap, still as death without any need to breathe to give birth to expression. Like always when he was out like this, he didn’t stir at the noise around him. You could set off a bomb right now and he wouldn’t move, and honestly it was amazing he had made it this long in his second life without dusting in his downtime, with how hard he slept.

A faint smile touched her lips as memory struck her. _“God, do you sleep through anything? I was like yelling, and nothing.”_

_“I'm a bit knackered. Had a long night. Someone should teach you how to use candles in foreplay, luv.”_

/God, we sounded married or something, didn’t we? Also, note to self about the candles thing./

/Anyhoo. Probably if I screamed right in his ear./ Besides, she knew if she was actually in trouble he’d be up in a second. The blood-bond would see to that. 

She stroked his hair lightly away from his ear, admired the way the light, filtered by what was left of the necro-glass to be less orange, struck his face. He looked tired. Pale and too chiseled, and marked with the effort of recent hours. Vulnerable and young right now, snuggled against her thigh; a smudge of who-knew-what high on one carven cheekbone, a tiny, healing gouge in the hollow beneath. No red around his eyes, though, and no dark circles, since she’d fed him before they’d marched into battle. Still, he looked like he was made of soft porcelain, almost, so that his long lashes showed up against his flesh like a fan, and his dark brows seemed painted against his forehead where all the cares of the last months, the last century—and, she thought, the addition of his soul—were wiped away by the simple act of lying safe in her arms.

Even then, he gave his everything to her, and why had she never realized before now how much of a gift that was, vampire to Slayer? He gave himself utterly, to her, beginning to end… and just was. 

And he was so _pretty_.

She had watched him sleep so many times, now, since they had come here, and let him watch her, finally. Once upon a time she had always left before morning; made every excuse to avoid a morning after. Let him think it was because sex, and not sleeping with. About drawing lines, and ‘this is not a relationship’, and… /And I even told myself that./ But in reality…

/If I left first, he couldn’t be one of the ones who left me. Because I couldn’t handle it if he left before me. Not _him_. Not the guy who never left. Not the guy I couldn’t shake off, couldn’t beat away with a stick or a stake. If I managed to chase _him_ off, there was no hope for me. So I had to leave first; every time. Had to stay awake after, had to keep it out of bed, had to keep it ‘just sex’…/

/Had to be the one to run. God, I was a dope. Like you were going _anywhere_./

She’d had to kill him to make him leave. /Hell, you even came back after trying to kill yourself for me!/

That was the thing. He’d finally died; and that was when it was enough. /Talk about asking a lot from your lovers to prove their devotion, Buffy./ That was what had made her take him to bed and keep him. That was what had made her take the risk to say ‘I love you’. She was already losing him. Her prophylaxis hadn’t worked. None of them had. /I slept with you, finally, and I didn’t leave first. And you were there in the morning. And then you found a way to leave, and totally fulfill all my fears, dammit. You _died_. So I said the words, because no point in holding back anymore. I was losing you anyway./ God, no wonder he’d half not believed her. 

But now, after a year of knowing she would have given anything to watch him sleep, to wake up in his arms just one more time? /God, I would have given anything to let you watch _me_ sleep. I would have let you hold me, and begged you to do it. Because I finally figured it out. Neither of us would ever even _think_ of leaving./

They had been given this second chance to have so many nights, just like that. And they had both taken full advantage, since. 

She watched him now; not in their bed. On a dirty floor, in a wrecked high-rise, an army not all that far away. It was hot as hell. Enervation screamed dully in every limb. Her hands were numb, her legs distant, her head muzzy with unfocused thoughts as she stroked a curl aside from his forehead with the tip of her finger. 

The corner of his mouth twitched slightly upward.

_“All I did was hold you… watch you sleep…”_

“Yeah,” she said, to no one in particular. 

It was like that.

Angel came stalking around a corner then, wearing his false vamp-face as he talked vehemently with Maria about… God. Something to do with their defenses, and Buffy must be more exhausted than she thought she was, because she was having a hard time grabbing on to what they were saying. Instead she found herself studying the fake features, more than a little impressed with the spell that had brought them into being.

It looked pretty real. Almost like he did when he was a full-on demon. Real enough, actually, that it had made her jump in surprise when she’d first seen him vamp out during one of the fights, before. She had stared long enough that first time that Spike had had to swing way wide on her behalf to keep her from getting her head chopped off. 

All that had been missing, interestingly, had been the crunching noises. /No bones really shifting around when it’s a spell/ she thought vaguely. Found herself studying it again, now, from the side, since she had the time; trying to find the ‘seam’ if you would, with reality. She decided in this moment that it was a little… fuzzy around the edges… /Or maybe that’s just my eyes playing tricks?/ She really was very tired. 

The point was, it worked. And in more ways than a false face. It was a really impressive facsimile, in general, of vampirism, that spell, when you took into account that it allowed her ex to throw people, vamp-style, growl vamp-style, jump vamp-style… She hadn’t gone head-to-head with him, so she wasn’t entirely sure how his false strength and speed matched up to the old him… and she really wasn’t sure she wanted to try, since she knew that underneath that spell was a breakable human body. She probably wouldn’t be able to make herself really let loose. But she was definitely impressed.

/Where did you even _find_ this spell, Angel?/ 

Maria nodded, and then glanced over at her and said something to tall, dark, and human in worried tones. Angel glanced back at her as well, frowned around his pretend vamp-teeth. “I’ll take care of it.”

“I’ll let everyone know.”

She disappeared around the next corner, and Angel approached Buffy to squat next to her on the floor. He more or less ignored the sleeping Spike to lift his hand and run it over his features, at which point the pretend-game-face vanished, replaced with his own. Silently, again. So bizarre. “You need sleep, Buffy,” he told her bluntly, and his eyes on hers were concerned.

She felt distantly startled at this assessment, though her startlement felt like it was sort of wrapped in cotton. “No, I’m fine. My shift is up in a few…” She frowned, wishing she had a watch. “Soon. As long as there’s no other attack I’ll be fine…”

“You’re squinting. And tilting at a weird angle. The only reason you’re not falling over is Spike’s got you anchored to the floor.”

She frowned fitfully down at the blond head on her lap. And realized with a start of surprised that it seemed a little further away than it had been a second ago. “Oh. Maybe I should get up and walk around for a few…”

With a sigh, Angel caught her shoulder and gave it a little shove, flat-palmed. And to her amazement, her abs gave out and she sort of keeled over around Spike’s head, landing in a kind of a comma-shape behind him, while his skull slid off her thigh and sort of lightly _thunked_ to the floor next to her pelvis. (Which, by the way, also didn’t wake him, and wow, Spike.) “If you weren’t beat, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. When did you last sleep, anyway?”

She gaped at Angel from the floor, stunned at her change in position as she attempted, very slowly, to calculate that information. It was sometime in the last three of their days, for sure, right? They were getting ready to come over here, and then there was all the prep, and then the sex—plus bonus topping-off of the Spike—and then the staying up all night talking and with the poetry-reading thing and whatever. Just spending time, in case they… 

Well, they had both been too keyed up to rest, pre-battle. And then the marching, and then the battles here, and then…

“See? I know you. You don’t sleep before battles, and you don’t sleep during wars. But I can take over for a couple hours, alright?”

She tried to push herself upright. Shook her head to clear it. “No, not without…” Half the girls needed sleep too, and…

“Buffy. I’m not out of spell-bombs and neat tricks from the vault. Everyone else has had their turn to crash. And you’re not doing anyone any good right now.”

Okay, maybe she needed sleep. She might just concede that. But what if there was an attack and she was out of it? Or what if…

“What about you?” she asked finally, getting the words out with an effort. He wasn’t a vamp anymore. When would he…

“I slept a few hours ago, while you two were up playing general. I was kind of depressed we didn’t get Cordelia back, so I curled up in a corner somewhere and felt miserable, and ended up passing out for a while. Nice side-benefit of my new situation. Never used to happen during my self-pity binges.”

That made her blink, because did he actually _say_ that? _Her_ Angel would never have been so blunt in any self-assessment. “Oh.”

“Go ahead. Pass out. I’ve got this.” He patted her lightly on the shoulder; without awkwardness, but also without too great a familiarity that would have been equally awkward, considering. “I’ll wake you up if we get attacked. I promise.”

She wanted to acknowledge that, with a nod or a ‘hm’ or something, but she was already about eighty-seven-percent falling out.

Everything went hazy and blank for a while, her only real sensation the fact that Spike’s head was still solidly against her hip; a cool, reassuring weight. And then, nothing.

She came to in the midst of a cacophony of shouts and screams, shot to her feet in a surge of adrenaline and scrabbling for her axe, heart thumping painfully, gasping for air and ready to do battle. And registered with sharp, sudden clarity, that the noise around her wasn’t that of a fight, but of… jubilation? 

“What can I say, Angelcakes? I thought you could use a hand. So; you want us on board?”

“C’mon, Lorne; the more the merrier!”

“Look who’s joined us, luv,” Spike was saying, to her left, and touched her hand lightly as he pointed with his chin. There, on the terrace that had once been a bank of windows, stood their green, horned friend from the battle in the rain, next to some kind of winged horse, because of _course_ he had found something like that.

This was actually a really cool and unexpected way to wake up. Reinforcements!

Then another guy stepped off of the Pegasus-looking creature; a longish-haired guy wearing bizarre leather stuff with studs on it, who reached out to grasp Angel’s forearm in some kind of old-school greeting like you’d find in the movies. He had kind of a baby face, with an odd, too-wide smile and a whole mouthful of super-white teeth. “We thought you would prefer to take to the air in your next battle with the enemy, my friend, so we return to you your mount.” And the stranger waved his other arm toward the window, leading all their eyes that direction. Just in time to catch Cordelia the dragon as she swept in, keening, and hove directly for Angel. 

The new guy and Lorne jumped back to make room while Angel shouted, “Cordelia!” and threw his arms around the animal’s giant neck. In response it crooned and rubbed on him like a really big collie, practically purring. 

“Ah,” the guy with the weird smile murmured sadly, “you too have named your mount after she who holds our hearts. This one…” And the stranger patted the winged horse, “is also named Cordelia…”

“Popular girl, that one,” Spike murmured from behind Buffy’s ear.

“Apparently,” Buffy answered a little wryly.

Angel looked over at the Pegasus-demon and nodded acknowledgment, still loving on his Lassie-dragon. “Makes sense. So, uh, is it just you, or did you bring anyone else to the party?”

“They brought me, and Nina and Gwen.” And, unseen before that moment, a rider slipped off the dragon’s back.

Spike groaned. “Oh, bloody hell; this is gonna be a shit-show.”

It was Connor.

Angel’s expression turned dark as he watched his son step down, followed by his two associates. “What the hell are _you_ doing here, Connor?”

The young man squared his shoulders and faced his father with fist clenched, looking, Buffy was helpless not to notice, almost exactly like Angel in that moment. The two girls silently flanking him as he spoke up, all stubborn. “Joining in the fight.”

Which was when Angel turned into a complete mama bear. “Like hell you are! You have humans to protect down there in Clover…”

“I have a father up here risking his life to save all of us.”

“Connor…”

_“Dad…”_

Angel jolted like someone had speared him through the heart. And every ounce of fight went out of him. “You’ve… You haven't called me that since…”

“Yeah, well. Got your attention, didn’t it?” 

“Honey, you’ve had his attention since the day your mama walked into the Hyperion, out to here.” Lorne sauntered forward, waving one green hand lazily in the vicinity of where a pregnant belly would be. “You should’ve heard the man sing to you when you were a baby. Tone-deaf as all get-out, but by George Michael, he tried. You liked it better than when I sang to you, and we all know who sounds better in _that_ race.”

Wow. Angel had _sung?_ Buffy couldn’t quite picture that. 

Connor looked pained. “You know I don’t remember any of that. I mean, I remember a lot now, but not…”

“I know,” Angel answered very quietly, and there was an agony in his voice that was unmatched in Buffy’s experience with him. It put what she’d heard the day he’d left her completely in the dust. “Doesn’t make it any less true, though. “Some nights, Cordy and I just laid in bed with you. Held you. She sang to you, and we looked at you and knew you were the most precious thing either of us had ever seen in the universe. That we would die to protect you.” His expression cleared. “And then we lost you.” Hardened. “I’m never going to do that again. Which is why you’re _not_ staying here to fight in this war…”

“I’m not a baby anymore, Angel…”

Their fight raged on, two stubborn souls equally-matched; but Buffy wasn’t listening anymore. She finally got it. Finally understood. What Cordelia had been to Angel that she hadn’t been. 

His _partner_. An equal adult while he’d tried to raise a child. His closest confidante while he’d gone through the most transformative experience of his life. Cordelia had seen him and witnessed him at his most vulnerable; during the bringing forth, and the loss of, this most treasured thing. A young life for which he had been utterly responsible. And he had allowed her to be that, to him.

Just like Spike had been, in a way, her partner when it came to taking care of Dawn; but even more so, because Cordelia had been there for Angel from the beginning, and had been there at the end. He had permitted her what Buffy hadn't even permitted Spike, and so the buck hadn’t stopped just with him, like it had with Buffy, and… God; no wonder Angel was so lost without her. /I’m so sorry Angel. I am so, _so_ sorry./ 

“All I’m saying is, I’ve grown up, and you have to let me make my own choices. I know you didn’t get to see it, but I’ve been through things training with my first… With Holtz that you can’t imagine, and survived them. And I’ve been in danger every day here picking up survivors around the city, so it’s not like I’m safe if I’m not in this…”

“Do you actually think he can’t handle himself?” Gwen piped in.

“Wait. You remember Holtz?” Angel sounded flabbergasted. “How do you…”

“Let’s just say I don’t think whatever spell you did on everyone works here in this dimension.”

Angel was very clearly staggered. 

Buffy still didn’t understand why it hadn’t all come back for her, then. The only explanation she could think of was she had never been told, which… /I get why Angel wouldn't've told me, but did Wil hear about it through the Cordelia grapevine and not tell me because it might hurt me?/ Because talk about wild, momentous stuff she should probably have known about, as the Slayer. /I mean, I know I was all wrapped up in Dawn and Glory, and then dying and coming back to life and being suicidal and stuff, but still. You’d think…/ 

It hit her like a blunt axe-blow. /Wait./ Had Spike known? They were his family, after all. /Did you know and just not tell me because you thought it would be too much for me, on top of everything? Because talk about a way to completely wreck Angel in my eyes; for banging Darla in the first place, and for not telling me about it in the second place. But it would be just like you to not take that road even if it might help you look better than him, if it might hurt me... And just like you not to realize that that was kind of a dumb move not to tell me that as the Slayer, because you were too busy trying to protect Buffy-the-Girl./ Spike's decision-making pre-soul had never been the most reliable, but it had always come from the heart and been well-meaning... and it had always been, at base, about trying to help the girl beneath the Slayer. /Well, when you weren't pissed off at me and reacting to me being a bitch to you, anyway./ 

Someday she'd have to ask him.

Nina, Buffy noticed distantly, was watching Angel wordlessly while he stared at his child, eyes bulging. “Sometimes I wonder about you, Angel. He says you erased his memory to protect him, because if you didn’t, you’d have had to kill him." Her narrow features hardened. "But when you think about it, erasing his identity kind of counts as killing him, doesn’t it?”

“Wh…”

“Think she’s got you there, Angelcakes. I guess in a way you fulfilled that fake prophecy after all.”

/What fake prophecy?/

“That's ridiculous, Lorne, and you know it. That whole thing was written in by Sahjhan…”

Connor’s eyes were hard on his father. “Fake or not, ‘Connor’ died to become ‘Stephen’, and then you killed ‘Stephen’ so I could become this version of ‘Connor’. And I know you did it to save me. But guess what? I remember who I am now, and all the things I did to survive my rotten damn childhood. And I can fight. I’m here. And I’m not gonna let you die after everything you risked to protect me, and just sit on my butt over there in Santa Monica babysitting refugees, okay? Not when half of this is kind of my fault…”

Angel’s face hardened. “I made that choice, not you. And I told you. As long as you’re alive, nothing else matters. They can’t win.”

Connor’s expression turned a creepily exact carbon copy of his father’s. “That’s _your_ war. It’s not everyone else’s, keeping me alive. And since protecting me kind of got us all here, I think I pretty much owe it to everyone to help us all get out alive.”

The standoff almost gave Buffy the chills. She didn’t think she was the only one. Spike stood tense beside her, sounding riveted. “Bloody hell,” he whispered, sounding something between choked and darkly amused. “Any popcorn in this sodding hole?”

Lorne broke the stalemate. “Angelcakes, c’mon. This is ridiculous. The boy wants to help you out. Think of it as a bonding thing. And besides… I heard him on the way over. He was singing some old Quortathian battle theme as we did our fly-by to grab the dragon…”

“How do you even _remember_ Quor’tath?” Angel demanded, breaking in. It was clear that he still just couldn’t fathom the whole thing. “You’re not supposed to remember _any_ of it!”

“Deal, Angel. Also, by the way, we should talk about the whole taking away my history someday, if we get though this. I mean, not trying to sound like a resentful teenager, but for one thing, talk about taking away my whole ability to defend myself in a bad spot.”

Angel gaped. “I was just trying to give you some peace! A normal life…”

Wow. How many people had her ex randomly mind-wiped for their own good over the years without consulting them?

“What I was saying, Cinnamon Bun, is your boy here is pretty sure of his path. I don’t think you’re gonna shake him. I’d give up the ghost if I were you and focus your energies on how to slot him into the battle plan. After all, he’s a pretty formidable fighter in his own right, if I do say so myself. Unlike yours truly.”

Buffy frowned and leaned back to catch Spike’s ear. “What is this Lorne guy’s deal, anyway? He keeps talking about singing, and…”

“Catches what people are feelin’ by what they sing, or hum, whatever. Someone does a bit of a ditty and he tunes in his empathy radio. Hears what they’re feeling. Back home he also gets the message from the Powers to tell them what they need to do to fix their lives, though I dunno if he can hear that part here.”

Buffy frowned fitfully. “Sounds like Sweet, except for the Powers part.” Which could be dangerous, and suddenly she felt more than a little wary of Lorne. “Are they related?”

Spike tilted his head, looking thoughtful. “Dunno. Similar enough, yeah? Have to ask if any of his cousins in Pylea were red blokes with pointy chins.” When she shivered, he touched her lightly again with his hand. “He’s a good guy, Lorne. Won’t make anyone dance.” And she felt him frown. “Don’t think he can, actually. He just likes the singing.”

“Well…” Buffy did her best to relax, though past experience made it tough. “At least it sounds voluntary.”

She was interrupted in her uncomfortable musings about musical demons when the guy with the too-big smile appeared very suddenly right in front of her and held out his arm just like he had with Angel. “I am Groosalugg. I am Champion of Silver Lake for our friend, demon-lord Lorne. I have been told that you are the woman who is the Champion of Beverly Hills. I am proud to meet you, and look forward to joining glorious battle at your side.”

Spike made a sound in her ear that was half amused snort and half grunt. Buffy was startled enough to hold out her own hand in a kind of reflex, vaguely charmed and slightly unnerved by the guy’s weirdly overt friendliness. He was so… simple, maybe? Straightforward? “I’m Buffy.” 

Her arm, rather than her hand, was grasped in a grip that was… okay. Impressive. It urged her to grab on with equal pressure, as if to show what she was made of. And was surprised again by the ungainly wideness of Groosalugg’s smile—what kind of name was that, anyway? Not that she could complain, when her handle was ‘Buffy’—as he nodded. “You have a fine grip. I can see by your strength that you would be an excellent Champion.”

Well, he just really put it all out there, didn’t he? No artifice or anything. He tilted his perfectly coiffed, windswept head—honestly, was he _trying_ to look like the cover of some romance novel? He was almost too pretty, it was weird—and smiled again, all genuine as he released her forearm. “Shall we discuss battle plans? I have heard you have led many a charge against the forces of the demon-lords with your companion, the famous Spike.” And he bowed, arms spread, to said vampire, in a bizarrely courtly fashion.

Spike grinned and, with a tilt of his head, pulled out a cigarette and his recently-refilled Zippo. “We don’t stand on ceremony much here. Got the whole ‘war makes equals of all men’ thing happening.”

“Ah. Excellent.”

This, then, must be the famous ‘Groo’. A half-demon from the same demon dimension as Lorne, she thought, if she could keep it all straight. “So, how did you retake Angel’s dragon?” she ventured, interested in that much at least.

“It is a worthy story,” Groo answered, still smiling that unnerving smile. “I was on Cordelia, my mount, scouting the terrain above Friend Lorne and Friend Connor and the others. We made a wide circuit and saw the dragon below, shackled to broken ground within a large amphitheater…”

***

Now that they had two flying beasts to use for reconnaissance and aerial attack, it made things easier from the standpoint of gaining intel and coordinating assaults. Buffy even worked out a little mini-paratrooper-type-thing with Groo, where they flew in with the Pegasus creature and the dragon once, Angel driving the latter with a very bundled Gwen Raiden as passenger, and she riding behind the former (Spike, as he put it, ‘rode bitch’ behind Angel and Gwen, and complained about it the entire way) so that they could drop in very abruptly on the demon lords and scare the crap out of them when they were in a little conference in the center of the Rose Garden.

The surprise visit had shaken them up a bit, as had Gwen’s electric hands. More importantly, it also made their point. As Buffy, Spike, Gwen, and Groo fought easily free and were picked up on the far side by Angel and the two Cordelias, the left behind an exceedingly shaken Bro’os who lay, wide-eyed on his back next to the bodies of the seven or so very large demons that had been attending the meeting as bodyguards, staring after them in sheer terror. 

/Yes. We can get to you anytime, Teeth. Which means do what you agreed to do or you’re dead./

Apparently their little assault on the inner circle ruffled some feathers, though all they’d managed to do in the way of damaging the actual demon lords had been to put a scare into the shark, cut a squealing, outraged Sherman Oaks on his saffron cheek, and kill a bodyguard who Buffy kind of thought might be a relative of Burge’s, they looked so much alike. Basically a big, animated gargoyle like that cartoon from a few years ago, only meaner…

The next assault on them was the fiercest yet. Three other of the gargoyle-looking things led the charge, howling with rage, and were only repelled by a concerted effort led by herself, Groo—he really was a hell of a fighter, and even stronger than Spike—Gwen doing her lightning-girl thing to zap the flying menace, Nina, who could honestly do some damage, fully-wolfy or no, to the ones who actually landed, and a serious spell-bombing led by Angel and Maria. They finally turned back and fell away on their few remaining dragons, but the entire floor of the building had basically been crispified by dragonsbreath and they had to evacuate down to a lower level. Which, yeah, was tactically lame, but Buffy supposed it was only a loss of about twelve feet, so it wouldn’t kill them, vantage-wise. “I don’t know. Somehow we really pissed them off with that whole gargoyle-killing thing.”

“Sing me a few bars of something martial,” Lorne advised her, drawing up even with her elbow. “Maybe I can figure it out.”

That jerked her head around. “I beg your pardon?”

“You sing. I suss out. It’s my gift.”

Spike appeared at her elbow from basically out of nowhere. “Can that even work here? I thought you wouldn’t be able to hear messages from up on high in this hellhole.”

The green, horny guy glowed with confidence. “I haven’t heard a damn thing but a bunch of emotions since I got here, but I dunno. Something about the Slayer here gives me an enormous feeling of confidence.” His red eyes swung back to Buffy, and he favored her with a sweet-seeming smile. “C’mon, Slayercakes, give us a jingle.”

/Um, no./ Buffy closed down like a tap. “No thanks. I’m sure we’ll bull through somehow.”

The green demon stared at her like she had herself sprouted horns. “Wow, murderpie; you sure don’t like what I do! What did I ever do to you?”

/_Murder_pie?/ “Nothing. I’ve got to go.” She started away.

“No, hold up. I’m getting serious echo vibes. But I’m sure we never met before you waltzed into all our lives with your boy Spike, there, so let a horny devil in on the secret. Did I do something to offend you? Because I definitely don’t want to be on a Slayer’s bad side; especially yours!”

She sighed and lowered her axe, feeling suddenly deeply weary. “Look. It’s not you. Let’s just say I’ve had a run-in with a guy who could do a lot of the same things as you, and it ended badly. As in, three people in my town died, and I almost went up in flames. Would have, if Spike hadn’t been there to save me. So yeah. Not a fan of singing in front of demons, okay? No matter how cuddly.”

“Wow. I’m sorry to hear that, Sweetie; sounds like a real troublemaker.” Lorne cupped his chin in one red-nailed hand, his elbow in the other, looking contemplative. “This musical tour de force have a name?”

“Sweet.” She bit it off with rancor. “Red skin. Crystal blue eyes. Long chin. Had a thing for tap-dancing.”

“Hm. Doesn’t ring a bell.” He shook his head. “May be related, but I gotta tell you, most of my people didn’t sing. I’m an anomaly; which is why I’m here. Heck,” he went on, and his face lit up then. “Maybe I’m a Pylean changeling, and I was supposed to be born in whatever dimension that guy came from. Who knows. But the point is, I’m not in it to make anyone dance to my tune. I just wanna help.”

“That’s great,” she answered flatly, “but I don’t sing.”

“Actually, she does,” Spike interrupted like a traitorous bastard. “Got a pretty damn good voice, too, come to that.”

Wrath flared, fueled by betrayal. “Spike. Stay out of this.”

“Honey. Don’t tell me she’s as good as you, or I’ll swoon.”

“I’m not. And _you_.” Buffy whirled on her lover, incensed. “Are you _kidding_ me?”

Spike’s eyes, as he turned to her, were serious, and gentle. “Lorne’s not a bad bloke, Buffy. He won’t hurt you. And we need to know.”

“You don’t even need to sing. Just hum me a few bars, and I’ll tell you about your monsters.” 

She didn’t even look at the green guy, her eyes still riveted on Spike’s. Because he would never, under any circumstances, risk her, and she knew it. But what he was asking her to do…

“It’ll be fine, Love,” he told her, low and serious. And his eyes begged her to trust. 

/Fuck./ “If this kills me I’m haunting you.”

“I bloody hope so.”

She whirled back to Lorne, trapped and pissed off about it. And, uncertain what the hell else to hum, came out with the theme to ‘The Pink Panther’, because it was suitably mysterious and puzzle-solve-y.

Lorne’s response was instantaneous. One hand clasped to his viridian forehead as if her little ditty had made his head ache, he moaned slightly, eyes wide on her face. “Hang on, hang on; I don’t know what it is about you, but it's working right now, and…” He whistled, sharp and low, halting her almost before she had even really gotten going. “Oh, murderpie. The demon you killed was Burge’s son.”

/Oh. Crap./ “Well, I guess that explains the big assault.”

“And I don’t see ‘em stopping anytime soon…”

“Everybody _brace_ yourselves!” Nicole screamed from the front of the room, and they whirled, at the same time as Tonya shouted, “Dragon attack!”

“I’ve got it!” Gwen shouted back, yanking off the red gloves she wore most times. She took point, lightning already crackling from her fingertips to arc across the broken glass.

The rest of the army leapt behind her to arm themselves and prepare to take on whatever got through. And while the electrical deep-fryer did account for at least half the dragon-horde… plenty did manage tumble past the gauntlet to come at them anyway. In successive waves.

From then on out it was pretty much a scramble.

***  
  
  
  
  
Thus commences the war. *devilish grin*


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first war for Hell-A continues... with a literal bang... and ends with not a little whimpering. But it's only the first war, so...

**B:  
**  
The battles started to blend into each other. It was becoming this haze of attack and counterattack the likes of which Buffy had never truly experienced before. There had been their siege experience in her home back in Sunnydale, The First and his Turok-Han and Bringer minions hovering outside the fringes of Revello like some kind of zombie plague, just waiting for them to step outside the doors. That had been anxious-making, sure, and tension had run high, especially when Xander had lost his eye and they’d lost all those girls in the vineyard attack and, well… yeah. People had thrown her out of her own house. 

But they had had time to train, in between. Relax. Try to be normal.

This was just a long, endless tattoo of lunges and parries and ripostes that never stopped, till it became simply mindless. Reflexive. No real strategy anymore. The demon-lords attacked. The good-guys whittled the baddies’ numbers down a little, but probably lost more they couldn’t afford to lose. Reframed things and counter-attacked a little later. Tried to do some damage. Retreated. Regrouped. And it started all over. Even the deaths started to blend together, and she was starting to go numb.

This was “day three”. Their “ninety-seventh” day in Hell-A, though technically still day thirty-two on the dimensional calendar, and _when_ was Bro’os going to do the thing with the Hagen Shafts? _Was_ he? Had he betrayed them? _Again?_

It was time they found out. “Hey. Groo. You wanna do some recon?”

The dark head lifted, and the too-long hair, almost girly in its perfect shine—seriously, how was he managing that in this climate?—gleamed at her in the orange light. “You wish to ride Cordelia out to get an idea of enemy troop movements?”

“I do.” My goodness, this guy was a literal creature.

“Excellent.”   
  
Pushing himself to his feet, Groo tugged at the leather laces of his tunic or whatever it was called. Buffy still got a glimpse, though, of an exceedingly smooth and well-muscled chest, and man. He’d really missed his calling. And yeah, she had totally lost her filter at this point, because the first thing out of her mouth was, “If we get out of this and make it back to LA, you should seriously look into a modeling job. You’d be amazing on book covers.”

“I do not know what this means.”

“Or selling men’s underwear…”

Groo looked startled. “Hawking undergarments sounds a task hardly befitting a Champion.”

/Well. Okay, Fabio./ “Never mind. Let’s go.”

She would just borrow the dragon instead of riding with Groo, but their in-house dragon was super freaked about leaving with all the local airspace being taken up by so many other dragons; even if Gwen had probably electrocuted two-thirds of them by this point. A territory thing, probably, so they’d mostly been stuck with using Groo’s winged horse. Which was fine, since it could carry two without too much added strain. Three was pushing it. 

As she moved to mount the Pegasus-demon behind her fellow champ, he turned his head back to her so that she could hear him. “Do you wish to inform your mate of your departure?”

She looked back to where Spike stood amid the gaggle of demon girls. His head turned as if drawn by her regard, and their eyes met. He gave a little nod of acknowledgment. “He knows.”

“Then we go.”

They launched out of the latest bank of broken necro-glass, and sailed out into the coral daylight, and it was weird, but she was kind of getting used to flying on the backs of random aerial demons. She supposed you could basically get used to just about anything, given enough time and sleep-deprivation. 

Well, war and weariness and the drumbeat of repetition kind of normalized a lot of bizarre stuff, actually, but she’d known that since she was fifteen. “Do you think we can…” she began, yelling into his ear so he could hear her as the wind whipped her voice away.

She never got to finish. “Ware, Buffy! Glorious death approaches!”

She grabbed his belt tight and leaned around him to get a look. And saw a giant cloud of winged creatures flying straight at them. 

It looked like they were about to do battle against basically every dragon left in Burge’s army.

***

“She was magnificent. A worthy Champion. Flinging herself from Cordelia to take the lead beast by the neck, severing its spinal column with one mighty blow…”

Watching them to one side, Spike groaned, in tandem with Angel.

“Hey,” Buffy protested. “It seemed like the thing to do.” 

“It was a feat worthy of the ages! I followed in a great dive as we battled from beast to beast, leaping through the air. She wielded her axe, and I my sword; with glorious thew. She was even more surefooted than I, for I slipped at one point, nearly fell from one vast neck. But she leapt from the throat of a beast to Cordelia’s back…”

“Oh, bloody Christ, Buffy…”

“…And flew from beneath to catch me.” Groo beamed at her, his wide smile seriously blinding in its brilliance. “I would go to war with you any day, Champion Buffy. You are as splendid in battle as you are in flesh.” And, bowing, he kissed her filthy, ichor-crusted hand.

“You’re not so bad yourself. I can see why everyone at Silver Lake feels so safe.”

“Alright, alright,” Spike interrupted, striding forward, and grabbed her hand out of Groo’s grasp. “So you did away with the dragon horde. All fine and bleedin’ dandy. Time for a rest and recoup, yeah? Thanks for watchin’ each other’s backs and all…”

“I mean no disrespect, Lord Spike,” Groo answered, with a deep bow. “I am simply honored to fight at the side of such a Champion.” With another of his bizarrely-wide smiles, Groo lifted his hand in farewell. “Until we do battle together again, Buffy.” And he turned away in the general direction of the bunking spot they’d assigned him. 

The instant he vanished into his usual crowd of admiring demon-girls, Buffy dug an elbow into Spike’s stomach, making him grunt. “Are you _serious?”_

“What?”

“Could you _be_ more jealous?”

That earned her a patented innocent look and a derisive scoffing sound. _“Jealous?_ What? Of that _poofy_-looking…”

“Exactly. I’m never going to want to do anything with a guy who’s prettier than me, so calm down.”

From over there across the room she heard Angel mutter something that had the words ‘pretty’ and ‘Cordelia’ in it. Buffy ignored him to watch her vampire, who was eyeing the departing Champion with narrowed eyes. “He _is_ a bit too girlish, yeah, for such a strong bloke.”

“And his teeth are seriously out of control. I think I prefer the vamp overbite to that uber-bleached smile. You’d think he ate Clorox for breakfast every morning.” 

“She has a point. Those teeth are even brighter than your hair, Spike.”

“Shut up, Angel,” Buffy commanded, keeping her gaze on her love. After a short pause, Angel turned and headed away after Groo, walking in an almost huffy way, if there was such a thing. 

Buffy was just glad to note that Spike seemed to be relaxing a little. “It’s just…” he began as her ex vanished around the bend, and alright. Whatever his body was doing, his voice was still pretty damn tight. “You really seem to like fighting with him.” 

/Oh. Oh, for God’s sake, Spike./ “I’m never going to like fighting with anyone else at my side more than with you, so you can stop worrying about that, too. Groo is just… currently useful.”

His eyes settled on hers, blue and knowing. “He’s convenient, is it?”

/Okay, ouch./ “Yes. But this time it’s the truth, not a total lie like it was with you.”

A cool hand settled into hers. Gripped tight. “Alright, then.” A short silence lay between them, and then Spike sighed and rubbed his free hand wearily between his eyes. “I wonder how bloody long this is gonna go on? Not sure when Teeth is gonna play his part; or even if he’ll do it at this point. Might’ve just thrown away those shaft things, yeah? Sodding traitor.” His worried gaze touched on hers, all the tension bleeding back into his long frame. “Should’ve just killed him outright, you think?”

“Maybe. Maybe we should start planning how we’re going to infiltrate…”

A huge explosion rocked the foundations of Wolfram and Hart. It knocked them off their feet, to a crumpled, mutual heap on the blood-soiled carpeting, Spike as always automatically attempting to cushion her fall. All around them came shocked shrieks of alarm as the building rang and rumbled with the after-tremors. 

Picking himself up from around her body, Spike poked his head up over her shoulder. “What the hell was that, a bleedin’ earthquake?”

“No.” Angel rose to his feet and stalked to the window, staring out. “It was a revolution. Cordelia!” 

The dragon came to him avidly, looking as excited as draconic expressions permitted. “I think I know what it was. I’ll be back.” And without another word, he mounted and they fell very abruptly out of the wrecked windows. 

“Well, alright then,” Buffy murmured to herself. “Thanks for keeping us all in the loop.” 

“Get the feeling our boyo there has gotten a bit too used to talking to himself in the last month or two.” Spike flicked some dust off of his blood-soiled shirt and, shifting, helped her to her feet. “Or maybe he’s still so used to giving orders he’s forgot we’re all here waiting to know what’s the gen.”

The waiting around was pretty irritating, so luckily it didn’t last long. Angel and the dragon swept back in within about twenty minutes and he hopped off, looking exultant. And hauled Bro’os off of Cordelia’s back to set him on the floor beside him.

The DL of Santa Monica looked pretty bad. He was covered in blood and yellow slime and pieces of what looked like torn demon-flesh, and had big patches of what, for a shark, might have been bruises. One eye looked damaged, and he was shaking from head to toe. 

The Armani suit was trash. 

“Your shark-boy did it,” Angel informed them, and gave the trembling Bro’os a pat on the back that nearly knocked him down. “Talked them into using the shafts. They’re all toast; though I guess he barely dropped his before it took him out too…”

“‘Bout bloody damned time,” Spike growled.

“Seriously.” How many people had they lost while he dithered?

Bro’os seemed not to have heard them. Maybe his eardrums had been blown out in the explosion—did sharks have eardrums?—or maybe he’d just completely lost his awe of them in the interim. He merely looked up at Angel in a blank sort of way, still shaking like he was going to fall apart. “I need to lie down.”

“Yeah. Sure. Find a place. You’re safe here.” Angel sounded too giddy to be anything other than magnanimous, which, okay. To all intents and purposes Bro’os had just won the war for them. She would have to give him that much.

“My… The offer is still good, right?” For the first time, the dark eye and the damaged one flickered to Spike and to her. “I’m gonna be compensated?”

/Yeah, that _would_ be what you’d be worried about./ “He did earn it, however late in the game,” Buffy allowed, and fought not to let her distaste show in her voice. /He’s not going to see the big picture, Buffy. The lives wasted while he cooled his heels, the people sitting back at all the DL strongholds, maybe dying while we were under siege…/

Most demons didn’t care. Especially bottom-feeders like this one. 

Spike was clearly as disgusted as she was, but he shrugged. “I told you before, Teeth. I’m no welsher. You’ll get your nice waterfront property, and no one will bother you. Just get out of here and find a spot to kip till we move.”

Bro’os didn’t say anything else; just let Maria and Griselda lead him away to some side-office.

“The blast also got Burge’s other two sons and the rest of the bodyguards.” Angel’s summary came out clipped and exultant. “The other Champions…”

/So long, Drugas. It’s been fun./ Buffy actually kind of felt bad about losing the honey-loving bat, smelly though it had been.

For one thing, flying around had cut down on the walking.

“The place was a mess. Their whole army’s scattered to the winds. But I figure if we don’t capitalize, and soon, a bunch of low-level flunkies are gonna try to take over each of those territories. We’ll be right back where we started in the beginning.”

“Yeah, well… I don’t know about you, but I think we could all use a rest before we start the cleanup.” Spike looked around the room at their weary, wounded army. “Then, I dunno. Maybe we can get to quartering the city looking for the various enclaves.”

It really hit Buffy then, what a massive job they had before them. “God. How many people must still be stuck in those palaces, trapped without water, or…”

Spike’s eyes riveted themselves on hers. “We’ll get ‘em out, luv.”

“You cannot rest yet, unfortunately.” 

Buffy jerked, stunned. 

That was _Wesley’s_ voice.

Angel whirled, anger and fear abruptly suffusing his features and frame. “Wes! I told you not to show yourself here as long as Illyria…” 

Gaping, Buffy followed his gaze, Spike moving in tandem with her. And saw an apparition that looked exactly like her ex-Watcher, hovering about three feet above the floor off to one side of the room. And it really looked like Wesley; right down to the glasses. Except… that wasn’t what Wesley had looked like when he died. This… ghost or whatever looked more like what the Watcher had looked like when he’d first come to Sunnydale—ineffectual and dorky, even—and, just… what?

“I regret the necessity. I would prefer not to be near either Illyria or Buffy, actually, in this realm, considering the consequences to my person… such as it is…” 

/Okay, why would there be consequences to him being around _me?_/

“You were staying away from Buffy?”

Buffy whirled on Spike in surprise. He sounded totally not-startled by the apparition, and had _he_ also known about this whole ghost thing?

Wes didn’t respond. “…But I had to give you a warning. You need to leave. Now. You are under attack…”

Okay, that kind of warning really put things into perspective. All other questions fell by the wayside for the moment.

“By who?” Angel demanded sharply, still acting completely unsurprised by the ghost’s appearance. Clearly he’d known Wes had been hanging around the building and hadn’t told anyone, which was… well. Kind of par for the course for Angel, lately, really. “All our enemies are gone!”

“Not this one. This one is someone you used to know…”

Angel shuddered as if someone had driven a stake into him. “Gunn,” he breathed.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Spike groaned.

“He’s coming _now? _Because of the whole ‘mad that I sent us all here’ thing?” Angel’s demand of the ghost—ghost?—was pained.

“He might be after me and Spike just as easily,” Buffy pointed out. “We’re the ones who wrecked his nest and took away his baby Slayers and his telepath. Who knows what he was planning with them.”

“Too bloody right,” Spike agreed roughly.

“Oh, hell,” Angel groaned, and then, eyes darting around wildly. “Well, either way, he can’t take us here, right? Even the demon armies didn’t try it, and if Buffy and Spike took out most of his army… Even if there are enough left to come at us, they won’t be enough to take this floor. We can hold out against…”

“He does not mean to come to you,” the Wesley-wraith informed them stolidly. “He means to destroy the entire structure. And he will succeed. You must flee. Now; or you will all die.”

Well, that sounded fairly dire. “What does he have; Semtex or something?” Buffy prodded wryly.

The floating apparition never got a chance to answer. Illyria had heard Wesley’s voice; had come pelting around the corner. 

She saw him. And fell to her knees. Promptly drained of color.

And started screaming his name.

***

They streamed out of the ruined, glassy law offices in a broken tumble, bloodied and bandaged, with Groo supervising from the air and calling out what he could see from above. Inside, as she helped to marshal their forces in the retreat, Buffy could hear Spike and Angel arguing. Because of _course_ they were. “No! You’re going to have to take her! I need to make sure…”

“I’ve dealt with sodding Illyria’s barmy freakouts this entire time; it’s your bloody turn. Dammit, Angel…”

“You heard Wes, Spike! For God’s sake, it’s _Gunn!_ If I have even a chance of heading this off, I need to try it! Maybe get him back on our side…”

“Are you _listening_ to yourself, Peaches? Bloody Christ; he’s a fledgling vamp! Beside that, he’s got a grudge against you _and_ us! He won’t listen to a bleedin’ word you say!”  
  
“Yeah, well; I’m not the one who went in guns blazing and tore into his nest, was I? Maybe I can talk some sense into him…”

“Oh, sodding hell…”

“I don’t care whether you like it or not; I’m going. I’m just a lone wolf in this, but I’m still a player.” Buffy turned back in time to see Angel actually slap Spike hard on the shoulder; a gesture that looked half like encouragement and half like a rude, semi-abusive buffet toward an expected action. “You’re the leader here in this upside-down dimension; so _lead_. I’ll be back.” And whirling back toward the upper floor they’d just evacuated, the elder of the two headed upstairs at a run, already calling for his dragon.

“Great bleedin’ git. Always gotta do the stupid thing, if it sounds half-heroic…” Turning back to Buffy, Spike waved one irritated hand. It was really all he could do since his arms were taken up with cradling the semi-conscious Illyria—or was it Fred, right now?—motionless in his arms. But there was a strange new something in the way he held himself; something that made Spike stand taller, and…

/It’s the acknowledgment. His nest-sire just gave him something that felt like grudging approval. For maybe the first time in his life, and…/ Something inside her tightened, watching her guy. “You’re worried about him.” It wasn’t a question.

He didn’t bother to deny it, as he might once have done. “Well, we need him. Much as I’d like to send the tosser up the river without a paddle, he’s right useful at times.” 

The sheer weight of undercurrents and riptides in water under that bridge would drown anyone else. Just watching it in the currently-midnight-blue of his eyes could drown a person in the backwash. “But he knows Gunn, right? He might be able to get through to what’s left of him?”

Spike shrugged, expression bleak. “No way to know. Which way the demon took him, how much of the man is left. It’s all a bit of a gamble.” His eye caught on the anxious barb of hers, and he twitched regretfully. “You’re no doubt right, though. Angel’s put in the time with Charlie-boy. He’s more like to make the difference than anyone else.” 

Still, he looked up the stairwell for a long moment before, with an attempt at a shrug, he waved it off. “C’mon, then.”

Having decided to avoid the surface streets in case they might run into Gunn’s vamp army, they spilled out of one of the basement exits of the building. Luckily they were known to Spike, who had no doubt used them often enough in the past to get in and out in the daylight back on the flipside of the mirror. From there they headed swiftly out toward the safe-haven he and Angel had discussed... which turned out to be that hotel where Angel used to work. Still owned; or, Buffy supposed, _had_ owned back when Los Angeles still existed in a dimension that believed in things like land deeds and property taxes. Hopefully the Hyperion was sitting unattended and free of demon squatters, or they would have another fight on their hands in order to repossess the former headquarters of Angel Investigations.

After a familiarly long trek through dank, gray sewer tunnels filled with the faint reflections of somber copper light, they surged up through the basement access of the hotel, past a rusting steel trapdoor, and into a vast room flanked by an iron stairway. A room filled with, at every corner, plastic flowers, covered in dust. Every color, from purple to saffron to fuchsia. An old white Frigidaire, probably once used to house clear plastic containers of outdated blood, stood in the far corner. Mats on the floor, as if the room had been used for practice. A couple of pegs on one wall, situated as if they had once held swords of some kind. Otherwise stark, it still spoke volumes. 

Angel had once used this room for training. And someone else, someone feminine, had trained with him, down here. And once that had stopped… he had never returned.

/Cordelia./

“Alright, you lot. Let’s head upstairs. Need to find a place to lay out our bitty Old One for some kip.”

“Seriously, though; what’s wrong with her?” Connor was staring at Illyria’s colorless form with some concern as Spike followed Buffy up the creaking metal staircase. (She had automatically taken point, since his hands were full.) 

Spike’s answer was clipped. “She has a bit of an issue with staying in her body when she’s stressed. Seeing Wes again counts.”

“Which is probably not a good thing right now,” Buffy informed him as she prodded open the door at the top of the stairs. It stood ajar, and led to a short hall that gave to a wide, bright lobby full of seriously outdated furniture. Her scope was such that she could view pretty much the entirety of the left side of the room… which meant that she could easily make out the specter of their old friend hovering above the middle of the floor, waiting for them. “Maybe you should just take her straight upstairs?”

“The coast is clear,” Wesley’s reverberating ghost-voice called as the group spread out behind her to fill the lobby. “All’s well for now.”

/Finally some good news./

She had to admit she liked this place a lot better than Wolfram and Hart. 

She’d never been to the Hyperion, and that on purpose, but she found it very much to her taste. Or maybe she’d just come to like living in hotels, but this place was very… What was Spike’s word? Posh. In an old-fashioned way. 

Her overall impression was that it was golden. Golden and wooden-y, full of mellow tones and aged bronze and verdigris and pearl grays and other colors she associated with another era. The furniture all seemed to have come from that other era too, whichever one it was—she was pretty bad at history, always had been—but some era in which weird circular couches were common, and studded metal doors, and French-cut glass set in dark-stained wood, and built-in cupboards, and green walls, and that kind of wallpaper that had gold flecks of paint in it, and where everything just had that faint hint of richness and sepia and there were polished wooden fans sending a light breeze over everything in the summer, probably with the smell of beeswax, but no air conditioning. When everyone had carried a fan, and women wore long dresses with really nice lace, and the men all wore fedoras and played cards, and it all looked like a scene from ‘Casablanca’.

And yeah, okay; she’d seen maybe too many movies like that growing up. The ones that all ended with some pretty intense proclamations of love, but all the actual love scenes had just begun with sudden grabbing by the shoulders and intense staring and honestly tame lip-locks with no tongue and then there were protestations about how this couldn’t happen, and then the resolve melting… And then fade to black. And you never saw how once the clothes came off all those women probably got just as down and dirty as anyone could possibly imagine, because modesty and breeding and morals and training or no, no one was ever that controlled or protest-y once you had someone’s tongue in… places. 

She knew now that was why all those movies used to fade to black. She had figured that out with Spike, if she had never understood it before him. They had faded to black because they hadn’t wanted ‘poor innocent girls’ to know the truth. That what those women had really wanted was to say to hell with all that closed-mouth kissing and saying no when what they really meant was _yes, _and what they had really wanted was to get to the good stuff. 

She found her hand absently stroking the pearl-gray velvet of the round couch where she sat, half-woozy and mildly dazed, and realized she was probably in some kind of post-battle state of dissociation while her leftover Slayer reflexes—aka her libido—perked down to station-keeping. Which meant that she was probably thinking about sex half because she always had a little adrenaline to kill after a fight, and also to distract herself while everyone got themselves settled, and she should be doing some organizing, right? Doing leader-y things, or…

Except when she looked up, everyone seemed to be doing fine. Lorne had actually taken over the organizing, with Conner’s and Nina’s help. They were sorting people out into various places depending on their needs. Lorne, who apparently knew this place inside out, was assigning rooms to the able-bodied, sounding more crisp than languid as he pointed them upstairs in twos, while Nina and Gwen stashed the more damaged people onto various chairs and things down here all around her. 

Where was Spike? He had taken Illyria somewhere…

Connor hove into her field of vision, lay a somewhat damaged girl next to her; a chartreuse one with burns all over about half of her body.

With a horrible jolt, Buffy recognized her green-skinned house-manager. “Gris…” /Oh God, Gris…/

Gris tilted her head at Buffy and smiled dazedly. “We won, _mami?”_

/Oh, man./ Her mind flashed back to Xander and his eye as she reached out. Caught the demon by the unburnt wrist and held on. “Yeah. We won, Gris.” /Not another casualty. Not another…/

She brought herself up short with an effort. /Shut it down. You’ve gotten too close. These are soldiers. They’re not… family. No matter how much time you’ve spent with them over the last couple of months. And they knew the risks./

Still, they deserved her attention. Buffy shot Connor a worried look. He returned it, uncertain, and twitched a glance over at Lorne as if to say, ‘Don’t ask me. Ask the guy who can sense stuff.’ 

She could ask the monster songster… but very suddenly Buffy just really didn’t want to hear the answer. “You just hang in there, Gris. We’re safe now.” 

“Yeah.” The busty girl smiled a little and turned her head toward the back of the couch-thing. Made a kind of humming noise. “It doesn’t even hurt much, except on the edges. Barely feel it…” 

That was bad. Buffy knew it was bad, and it terrified her. It terrified her to be here with this possibly-dying ally, this person she knew well, when they could have fixed it over at Wolfram and Hart, with all those paint-by-numbers spellbooks and things. Because here, they couldn’t. Angel and Wes and the rest had taken everything with them when they’d moved over. There was nothing here but emptiness and dust, and Gris was one of Spike’s earliest and most loyal retainers, and the first of the demon-girls in his menagerie to support Buffy at the Pink Palace…   
  
And Buffy realized right then that she no longer saw these people as demons first. They were just people who happened to be demons. Something had shifted in her, during her time here, that had already been in the process of changing even before. Something about her shifting-to-gray but still mostly black-and-white interpretation of the world. ‘Demons bad, humans good’ had long since become, even back home, ‘most demons bad, some demons meh; most humans good, some humans terrible but not my problem’. Here, though…

Something that hadn’t quite registered a couple of years back, when she’d heard about Cordelia’s ascension, or whatever it had been, via Willow. Cordelia had allowed herself to become part-demon in order to keep her visions. Buffy had been absolutely horrified by that choice, if distantly glad for Angel’s part that he could keep his tenuous connection to the Powers. /Though, I guess I had my chance to become more demon-y in the service of the cause—like Sineya—which I guess could've spared all the Potentials from having to be activated... but it seemed like a lot to ask to have me sacrifice even more of myself, my humanity to save the world again to fight the Turok-Han. Not that I knew then what the cost would be to everyone else. To the girls. To Spike./  
  
Not that that was necessarily the same thing. Cordelia had done it to become somehow more... _something_ with her less-humanness, while for Buffy it would have made her more animalistic, more vamp-like, which...  
  
/God, how did that even work? Was it just type of demon used?/ Because apparently, bizarrely, being part-demon had been what had allowed Cordelia to ascend as a member of the Powers; had made her a higher being. Which definitely didn’t make sense according to Buffy’s then much more black-and-white classification system, because ‘demon’ had always only ever meant varying shades of ‘bad’. Demons like Clem had been, you know, ‘harmless but still soulless’, yet certainly nothing in the running for ‘higher being’; and his guys were the best of the bunch. Ano-Movics, Brachens, the rest of the harmless were okay, but for sure none of them would qualify in her mind as ‘PTB messenger quality’. She had always thought it was the human in Angel’s first visions-guy that had qualified him as a good PTB messenger-candidate. But apparently demons could be classified as both higher and lower beings, and, well…

And there was of course the Vampyre Book, and the quote about demon-souls. A different kind, but… Being a demon obviously didn’t automatically connote soullessness. /Obviously if you look at vamps and vengeance demons, they probably have _more_ than one. Probably the Scourge would be all over them, too, just like the vamps, if it weren’t for D’hoffryn. Probably he keeps them immune because he’s so uber-powerful. And no doubt they're majorly important in the whole demon economy somehow./ But there were two exceptions to the rule right there; Cordy and people like Anya. Three, if you counted the whole convoluted case of the vampire… and she had just never really known anything. She had thought herself all sweet and magnanimous for being nice enough not to go marching in every Tuesday to clean out Willy’s bar just for existing, with her whole, “You have to show me dangerous before I’ll kill you” rule. But the problem with that was, that rule still assumed that all demons were evil and just had yet to do anything wrong directly in front of her.

She could put some of that on her teachers. She had parroted what she had been taught. But then she’d grown up, and hadn’t looked at the evidence in front of her. When presented with it, she had been blind to the shades of gray. Willfully, even when new proof had presented itself. Had taken what were sometimes just the practices of completely alien cultures as evidence of malfeasance, or the underground economies developed by the hunted which might not even have existed without the pressure of her presence, and wow. She had been like the bad cops abusing the minorities in some ways, hadn’t she? 

Was that one demon right, who'd come into the throne room with his accusations? Had she inadvertently produced some of the criminal behavior she had then had to fight? And had she treated Spike’s demon-girls as less than people for months simply because she hadn’t wanted to see them as equals?   
  
Till now, when—like Gris here—they had fought and died beside her just like her friends and the Potentials had. Because she hadn’t wanted to get close, be forced to see them as people.

She looked at the pale green hand in hers, forced herself to recognize the horrible lacing of pine-and-charcoal burns tracing over the rest of Griselda’s unhealthy, lime-colored body. And her eyes shuddered away. /You’re still doing it now./

/Maybe I can fix it. Maybe make a quick run back to Wolfram and Hart. Make a raid for healing texts, or…/

A huge, muffled rumble sounded from somewhere to the left. And then, with a vast _whap_ that damn near broke her eardrums, a wall of air exploded over the building, shaking plaster from the ceiling over all their wounded. Propelled by the concussion, Buffy nearly fell off her couch. 

A couple of their damaged folk _did_ fall, to the accompaniment of sharp cries and increased moaning. Luckily, when she checked, Gris had remained in position. Falling on those burns would not have helped her at all.

“What in the name of Madonna was _that?”_ Lorne demanded, uncovering his ears.

“Wolfram and Hart has been destroyed.” The calm, unruffled delivery of Wesley’s ghost remained as straightforward as ever. 

Well, so much for getting… /Oh God_. Angel!/_ “Did… Is Angel…”

The ghost stilled. Looked upward, as if seeking for enlightenment. The glasses even seemed to glint in the rust-colored light as it filtered through from the stained-glass cupola above. And then the familiar face of her former Watcher, drowned in the light of otherworldly information, looked down on them and smiled kindly. “I do not believe…”   
  
There was another concussion, shaking everyone nearly off of their feet. Abruptly, Wesley’s image blinked out, vanishing utterly.

/Well… okay. Bye?/

Buffy found herself praying that what the wraith had been about to say was that Angel hadn’t been caught in the blast. But the fact remained… “He’s been gone a long time.” And that awareness was enough to push her to her feet with new shot of adrenaline despite her muzzy weariness. She gently laid Gris’ hand across some unburnt section of her belly and turned to face the others who had regained their feet. “If he’s met with Gunn and he still decided to destroy the building…” 

Decided, she steadied herself wearily when the world tried to shimmy around her. “Lorne, I’m going to go consult with Spike.” She assumed he was upstairs somewhere tending to whatever half of Illyria they had available at the current moment, since he tended to take his duty as her caretaker and personal protection as fairly sacred when she was busy being all gentle and periodically Fred-like.

Once upstairs she had to calm herself and work at it. After all, she was no vampire, able to just stand there and sniff the air to find out which way he had gone, like he could do. She would have to use their blood-bond to locate him. Feel the pull between them. Easy enough to do, of course, when she concentrated for the remotest moment. Consequently she pushed away all current anxiety, the pooling restlessness and fear, forced herself still and just _felt_ for him. That last was especially easy now, after so many months of sharing, of relying on it to keep them grounded and together.

It took a millisecond to find him. _That_ way. To her right and down the hall only a few feet. The closest room he had been able to find with a bed, probably. 

She pushed open the door he’d left ajar for her, stepped in on as quiet a tread as she could find. He was hunched over the aged, twin brass bedstead, looking exceptionally tired, though he acknowledged her presence with a faint ripple of his shoulders as she approached. 

She crouched beside the chair he’d pulled close for his sentinel services, laid a hand lightly on the small of his back, slid a quick, assessing gaze over the still, rumpled form on the bed. God, this Fred woman had been tiny. Taller than Buffy, but probably what the writers had in mind when they came up with that word, ‘willowy’. She seemed frail, almost, once you removed the enormous sense of presence that was the azure Old One. No wonder Spike always carried her so gingerly, like she was about to break. “What was all that sound and fury?” he asked when she entered. He didn’t even turn his head, though, as he said it.

“Wolfram and Hart coming down like the World Trade Center of evil, apparently.” She kept her voice pitched low; an instinctive measure meant to avoid disturbing the person slumbering fitfully on the sheets. “Wesley’s ghost has vanished. I think he tried to tell us before he left that Angel’s alive, but I’m not sure.”

Spike grunted and turned his eyes back to his charge, as if drawn by some kind of magnet.

“How is she?” It came out in a bare whisper that only a vampire could pick up. She wasn’t sure she had ever seen it this bad, honestly.

“Worse, this time,” he answered grimly in confirmation. “Seeing Wes… didn’t help.” A pained note was in his voice; almost accusing. “Almost got her to realize, last time, that he was gone, yeah? And now this.” A rippling twitch of the shoulders, almost as if he were trying to throw off an event, turn back time. “Sodding spook’s got to ruin everything.”

Buffy frowned at the somnolent form. “Maybe not.”

That earned her a burning look. “You think she’s good like this? Think she’ll do us any good? She’s a right mess. Can’t be Illyria, can’t be Fred…”

An idea was forming in her; a hopeful one. “Can’t she?”

“No, she bloody well can’t!” he exclaimed, if still in a strained whisper. “Fred’s dead! Saw her fight for her life. Saw it leached right the fuck out of her as the Old One consumed her soul like fuel; used her up like a caterpillar being eaten to become bloody Mothra. Valiant as hell, the way she fought, but she’s dead all the same and Illyria’s the one’s here, so it does sod all good pretending. This is just a copy. A recording. A bloody shell, whimpering here, crying about what was lost. Best not to pretend, or moan about what could have been.” His face tightened so that she thought he’d rip at the seams, skin raw at the cheekbones till she thought they would cut him open, they were so sharp there. “Bein’ like this, for her, is as bad as the chip was for me. She can’t be the demon, can’t be a woman anymore. She’s stuck halfway and it’s killin’ her.” The way the recital tore at him, a searing retrospective, burned her now; a glimpse into his past torments. “I get that, don’t I? I bloody understand that better than most anyone, but I can’t help her, despite, and it rips my guts out to see it.”

She thought maybe he was projecting, just a little. And it still killed her to see him in so much pain. “I’m just saying, maybe it isn’t like that for her. Maybe…” She had to swallow, knowing how much harder she might be making this on him to say it, but… “Maybe she might be able to come back, in the same way you did. From behind the Old One. Maybe this dimension is different than ours, and it’s bringing her back. Because like you said; the rules are different, or she wouldn’t be able to do the time stuff, and the power-punches and whatever...”

Spike’s shoulders hunched. “That just means she’s tearin’ apart at the seams; like before, but in slow motion. An’ when she goes, there won’t even be this left.” 

“What if… when it happens, she tears apart into… two again? What if she becomes Fred… and Illyria?” /What if you could have your friend back?/

Haunted eyes turned slowly to meet hers. Buffy was shocked by the way they looked. Clouded; more gray than blue, like a pewter sky before a storm. And then he was up, and pulling her with him toward the door. 

She went, arm tight in his grasp; tight enough that it would leave bruises later. It was the first discussion between them in a long damn while that had gotten so heated. And yet it wasn’t a fight. He was in pain. So much pain that she scarcely felt the pressure of his fingers as they punched into the flesh of her tricep, she remained so focused on the agony in his eyes. “You don’t think I want that to be true, Buffy?” he demanded, almost growling in his intensity.

They were still in the room, as if he couldn’t bear to leave it, but far enough away from the bed and its motionless occupant that he felt able to debate the subject. Out of respect for his unspoken deference she kept her voice equally low. “I think it could be,” she answered gently. “We don’t know…”

“You’re right,” he countered, and flung his hand away from her arm, dismissing it. “We _don’t_ know.” Closed his eyes, though it did nothing to hide the agony and terror as it radiated from his entire body in palpable waves. “It’s a pretty idea, luv, but…”

“You don’t want to believe it in case it’s not true.”

His voice went hard again, the despair leaching away to be replaced this time with simple, weary discomfort. “Course I want it to be true,” he admitted. “I loved the girl.”

Her heart turned over. Clenched tight. And she didn’t want to hear this, but… He needed her, and she would stay. Would stay with him through anything. 

“Impossible not to. She was right classy, and sweet as a kitten.” His eyes jerked open then to meet hers, defensive. “Not the kind you eat,” he informed her stoutly. “Just… sweet. A little old-fashioned, so she made me feel… chivalrous.”

/Oh God. Like Dru, right? You fell for her because she made you want to protect her? And so part of you still does, because she hits your Drusilla-button, in the way I never will, because I’m too strong, and…/

“Hadn’t felt that way in a bit…”

That was exactly it. He hadn’t felt that way in the entire time that they had been… involved, and oh god, she would so be running away right now if… 

Buffy wasn’t stupid. She knew she was an anomaly for Spike, just as much as he was for her. This Fred girl was so much more his type. Brunette, willowy, in need of a hero. God, what if Illyria stayed away and Fred _was_ here to stay? Was she stuck in a threesome now? 

Could she _do_ that? For Spike? To keep Spike? Because if this… If _that_, was something he _needed_, then… /Oh God./ Then there was that other consideration. Would he eventually leave? /Leave me, for her?/ Because how could Buffy compare to someone who desperately needed Spike’s protection and care? Someone driven half-crazy by that kind of existential conflict? He understood it all too well, with all he’d gone through, and the way he needed to tend to someone, take care of her…

/That’s why Riley left me. Because he needed to be needed, and I…/

“And she tried hard to help me when I was a spook,” Spike was saying from somewhere far off in the distance; right in front of her but somehow way outside of her thoughts. “Harder than I had any right to expect or deserve, considerin’ she didn’t know me from Adam, and only that from what Angel put in her ear. But she…” He looked away. “She was just one of those purely kind people, yeah? The sort who care about everyone, no matter what it costs them?”

“Yeah.” Buffy nodded, looking into her hands. Fought to keep them and her voice steady. “I know. Like Tara.” /Except Tara was no damsel. And gay. Whereas this Fred…/

“Yeah.” He nodded. Swallowed a little. “Never did get to say how sorry I was about her. She was a right wonderful bird too. What with everything… never even got to say it to Red. Know you loved her too…”

“I was just barely getting to really know her,” Buffy admitted, suddenly more than willing to run with the change of subject and never look back. “I think we could’ve been… really good friends. And then she was… just gone.”

“Yeah. That Warren was a right piece of work. Can’t say I’m too sad about it that Red skinned him.”

She let that one pass, since… well. Debates about the comparative ethics of revenge had always been thorny ground for them. “It was hard on Willow,” she said instead. “But she got past it eventually.” This was really not fair to him, that she was so happy to completely flee from the whole question of Fred. /You’re being avoid-y. You don’t want to face that this other woman has his heart too. You don’t want to share any part of him, and now you’re maybe going to have to, and you’re being a huge, gigantic coward…/

“‘Magine it was. She’s a softy underneath. Skinnin’ a bloke alive’s nasty work. Right hard to live with somethin’ like that, even if you’re doin’ it for a righteous cause.” He looked away. “And it doesn’t bring the bird back.”

“No.” She reached out. Touched his hand. “I’m sorry you lost…” She fought with it. “Someone you… loved.”

He nodded. Swallowed again before he trusted himself to speak. “Yeah. Me too. Maybe we could’ve been right good friends, if she’d lived. Dunno. Haven’t had all that many.”

/Wait, what?/

His eyes found hers. “Really don’t know that I’ve had anyone has touched my heart or tried to care for me, ‘cept you, since Dru; and then it was more me doin’ the caring. It was nice. Knowing someone gave a damn, without me having to give all of myself.”

Okay, Buffy was seriously confused, now. Because what he was saying was that he had loved this Fred girl because she… had been his friend and cared about him _without_ requiring him to be a lover, or needing him to take care of her. Which was…

_What?_

He must have seen the expression of utter befuddlement on her face, because he stilled to watch her for a moment, seeking. Then, as if he had found what he was looking for, his eyes cleared. Lit up, back to their normal bright blue. And kindled to almost twinkle. “Gettin’ a bit jealous, were we Slayer?”

/Okay, you know what? That so wasn’t…/ Worried, okay, yeah, about what it might mean. Jealous, no. “I…”

“Can’t believe I missed it. You getting’ all wound up about it.” He was still smirking, the smug bastard. “Was caught up in me own misery for a mo’, but… That’s it, innit?” 

God, he could be irritating. “Oh, shut up. I mean, I wasn’t there, and you had a perfect right to fall for someone—especially someone who got you in the chivalry-place, because God knows I won’t ever do that for you—and I just thought it might mean…” She stumbled over it. “If she…”

A delighted half-smile spread across his face, despite the solemnity of the moment, and he reached out to brush a lock of wayward hair up and behind her ear. “Oh, Love. Much as the prospect sounds lovely on paper, I think Illyria finds me more interesting than Fred ever did, for one. And I like my bits where they are; though I have to admit…” And here his eyes watched her with a new interest. “The fact that you’d even entertain the notion tells me a few things about _you_ that I think we should come back to someday, yeah?”

Indignant didn’t quite cover it. “Listen, mister. I was worried about _you_, not having a sudden attack of the bi-curious…”

His smirk managed to widen, if that was even possible, the unbelievable punk. “Be that as it may, you’re an idiot, Buffy.”

_“Excuse_ me?” 

“As if I could ever let myself go that far over any other bird, with you still in the world at all. And as if I can’t just look at you and know you need me, in all the ways you never let yourself need anyone else. What destroyed me all those years was knowin’ you wouldn’t _let_ me love you, not thinkin’ you didn’t _need_ it.”

She sighed testily and looked away. Because he was a jerk, and he was right, and she _knew_ it, in all the ways she had never admitted to herself before that night in that strange house on that strange bed while the world had fallen apart around them… and he had been the only one who had been able to hold her together. 

Just like she had been the only one who had ever been able to cut him free and save him, while the world caved in. /Except that once./ “Well, if I’m an idiot, you still count as a bigger one.” She would stand by that for all time. The fact that he had thrown her ‘I love you’ back in her face, when it had been tendered with everything she had in her in that moment, still stung. Probably always would. 

He scoffed, but didn’t debate the issue. Just looked away, over at the bed. “You needn’t worry about it anyway, Buffy. Even if I started having impulses toward idiot chivalry, Fred never needed me. You wouldn’t think it from such a slip of a girl, but she stood on her own two feet, and gave back with all she had. And she had Wes, and Gunn, since long before I ever came into the picture. Though, now they’re gone.” His tones had gone bitter, there, at the end. “So yeah; I try to help, if only because she helped me.” His face twisted. “And because she was my friend, and I miss her. Feel responsible to what’s left, as she helped me when I had no one else.” He turned back to watch the bed’s still occupant, clearly distraught. “Not much more to it, though, than that.”

No wonder he was so attentive now to the shell of the girl he’d lost. To the Old One, even, who wore her like a coat. 

Spike had never really had friends. Not even among Buffy’s circle, except for, he supposed, maybe Dawn? And Fred had been his friend. 

What a roller-coaster. In ten minutes she had gone from hoping maybe something might happen in this dimension to drive Illyria away forever, to praying they could keep the Old One around—and not just for the firepower—to hoping yet again, for Spike’s sake, that the blue and the powers and all that would stay gone forever. 

Not that she didn’t like having the demonic demigod as an ally. And they definitely needed her special brand of _oomph_ if it came down to another fight. But Buffy kind of thought Spike needed this Fred girl back more. And she selfishly wanted that for him. After all, she knew what it was like to have friends, and to live without them. Knew the difference he had never known. Not really, this man who had had to count as his ‘family’ sociopaths like Darla and Angelus and a madwoman like Drusilla as his closest confidantes for over a hundred years, and who had never, by his own confession, felt close to anyone but her, the woman who had spent three years teeing off on him because, in essence, he kept hanging around, and he wasn’t the vampire she wanted… and because the one she’d wanted to hang around hadn’t.

Buffy missed her own dysfunctional friends every day, though she seldom let herself feel it. She was good at not feeling, if she worked at it. Good enough at it that she barely had to think of it as work, anymore; barely had to notice that she was doing said work. It was part of the background noise of her brain as she buried herself in the day-to-day buzz of the immediate now; of survival and sex and the current reality. But then, she had been missing her made ‘family’ since the hellmouth had fallen, if not before, so she had had practice. Giles had been gone from her, really, since he had left her shortly after her resurrection. What she had gotten back when he’d returned had never been entirely the same, relationship-wise, and he had seemed almost… relieved to leave again, start up his Slayer-cell in Russia. Like being stuck with her had cramped his style or something. It hurt too much to think about, much like any thoughts of Giles hurt too much to think about these days. 

Willow… Willow had basically fallen off the map with Kennedy since that stuff with rescuing Xander from Dracula. Who even knew what she was up to right now, except Buffy thought that her once-best-friend was kind of avoiding her. Maybe because of the Kennedy thing? Maybe…

Oh, who even knew anymore.

Xander… He might be back from traveling around Africa looking for new Slayers, but he might as well still be gone. The third of their trio had changed so much he was barely recognizable; and not just in the face. Losing Anya had killed all of his humor, turned him into a shell of himself. It hurt to even look at him, sometimes, now; and not just because of the guilt.

And then there was Dawn, who had not only changed on the outside, but had also become oddly unrecognizable otherwise, while still remaining the same old sister Buffy had known. Dawn was not letting her be sister enough to tell her about whatever had happened with Kenny because Buffy had become too much of a mother to talk to about these things, but had been too absentee to be a sister, either. Dawn had altered a lot too; enough that she kept going back and forth between the teenager Buffy knew, who never wanted to talk about anything because it hurt her too much to open up, and the self-reliant young woman she had been forced to become by circumstance and was now a stranger to the woman who had supposedly raised her since their mother had passed. She had become unrecognizable, while Buffy had spent so much time away fighting to protect her, protect the world for her, that she felt like more an absentee parent who didn’t know her child anymore than a sister… and a sister who didn’t know her sibling anymore either. 

Maybe they were too far apart in years and too close together in space to know each other at all. And maybe she, too, had changed too much to be recognizable to Dawn. 

They had all changed irrevocably. Her entire family was falling apart, and maybe she would never see them again anyway. That thought sometimes woke her up at ‘night’ feeling hollow and empty enough that Spike, who knew her all too well, never had to ask when he held her and rocked her against his chest and talked about things that had nothing to do with them at all. She knew he sometimes felt inadequate a trade-off for her; that she had chosen to come to him, and in the end had inadvertently forsaken all others in her quest to bring him back to the fold. As if, as always, she could have him, or she could have the rest of her family… but never both. 

And yet. And yet. She understood. Because of all that, she understood loneliness, and loss, and choices. Understood, finally, what he had given up to love her, all those years in Sunnydale. Understood what had been torn from him here, now. What he saw when he stared at that essentially empty bed here, in this defunct hotel room where Illyria’s unoccupied shell lay immobile and fragile and breakable as any human could ever be. The possibilities that had never been, and could never be, torn away too soon, after just a taste of happiness. Of love. Of belonging.

She wished she could give him back what he had lost. What they had both lost, in coming here. In that other world. All of it. And that she could give him more of herself. 

Not that any of them had any control over what happened here in this hell that was starting, very rapidly and finally, to live up to its name.

***  
  
  
  
Where do we go... from here?


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where we see (more of) what Gunn's been up to. Mostly this riffs off of comics canon, but with a twist.
> 
> **I'm posting a few chapters today, to catch people up to other sites. I keep getting behind here somehow. No clue how. Sorry about that, y'all!**

**B:**  
  
“I don’t care! Angel’s been gone too long! Something’s happened to him! We need to…”

“We need to stay together. It’s what he’d want us to do, Junior…”

_“You_ don’t know. You two practically fight at every opportunity!” Connor whirled away from Spike and back toward Lorne, waved a livid hand, face suffused red. “Look; I can’t just _sit_ here…”

“Calm _down_, honeybun; you’re blowing my eardrums out!”

“I don’t _care!_ Listen, that’s my _father_ out there! I just found _out_ about him a couple months ago, so if you think I’m gonna let him…”

Buffy had to admit she was more than concerned at this point herself. “He kind of has a point. It’s been like a day. Our time, anyway…”

Lorne shot her a pleading glance, Gwen, clinging to Connor’s arm, a poisonous one. Spike just looked unsurprised at her standard ‘devil’s advocate’-slash-‘risk-prone behavior’ model.

“Here’s the problem, murderpie. I promised Angel I’d keep this boy safe back when he was in teeny-tiny newborn diapers…”

Connor groaned, dismissing this. “That so doesn’t count, and you know it. That all went out the window when everyone who vowed to keep me safe _didn’t.”_

Lorne went a kind of a pale lime-meringue color. Clearly that was some sort of low blow. 

“That was bloody unfair, you little twat…”

“Yeah? _You_ weren’t there, so you don’t get to talk! Just ‘cause you know about it somehow, which, by the way, I’m not sure why you’re suddenly all up on my Dad’s and my business, if you’re so _not_ buddy-buddy…” 

Belligerent, much? 

“I know because we're family. And like it or not, Junior, the sod raised me before he had you, so I can read him like a book. Know what he’d want; and what he wants is for you to stay safe…”

Something seemed to snap in Connor’s face. “Well, I didn’t get six or whatever lifetimes with my father, okay, ‘big brother’, so…”

Snark ahoy. Also, jealous much?

A lot of hurt, there. 

Spike’s face twisted in that way that Buffy knew meant there was about a whole book’s worth of stuff he was trying not to say about how much Connor had lucked out in not having been raised by his father. “It was twenty years. And I’ve tried to help you. Pass on the good bits, keep mum about the shite bits. It’s not my bloody fault that you didn’t get…”

“Well, you did anyway. And I. Want. My. Chance. I wanna know Angel, the way you do…”

/Careful what you wish for, Connor./

“I want my dad back!”

God. It hurt to hear. Buffy knew that desperate cry for an absentee father, and it twisted in her. Made the words fall out of her face before she even realized they were bubbling up. “How about if I go with him? To help him stay safe while we check on Angel?” She hadn’t even registered her intention to speak. Which was kind of par for the course for her, but then she had long since perfected the art of the flat, innocent stare when meeting the stunned gazes that whipped her way after pronouncements like those. They no longer made her blush, or retract her offerings, as they once might have done. 

“Oh, Slayerbuns, don’t encourage him, please…”

Gwen was right on Lorne’s tail, completely up in arms. “Listen, you crazy woman! You want him to go into some nest full of vampires with just _you_ as backup? I’m pretty sure the famous vamp-warrior Angel can take care of himself…”

“Angel is no longer a vampire.”

They jerked around as a body to stare. That was a voice none of them had, to this point, expected to hear again. But there she was, regal as ever. Illyria, descending the stair in all her ultramarine glory, eyes sliding over each one of them as if they were almost but not quite beneath her notice. 

“Oh, bloody hell,” Spike muttered. It took Buffy a sec to realize why he was so upset. 

Actually, it took Connor’s reaction. “What? He’s _not?”_

/Oh, crap./ The cat was out of the bag.

“He is not. He sustains the illusion of his former demonic glory with spellwork and farce given him by the specter of our old friend; but he is, in this dimension, human. More so, even, than you, his son, and with less _van-tal_ in him than the demon-Slayer.”

/Wait; what’s a _van-tal?_ And way to out me, by the way, you crazy demigod bitch!/

“At the hands of one such as Charles Gunn,” Illyria went on blandly, “he will surely die if that secret were to be found out.”

Connor whirled abruptly to glare at Spike, voice low and venomous. “You _knew_. You would know. You’d smell the difference…”

“Listen. Junior. He didn’t want…”

“And you let him go down there anyway…” The teen was stalking closer to Spike now, every line of him stating deadly intent. Spike had his hands up in a belated attempt to placate the young, stalking tiger, but the kid was clearly beyond all reason. And this had gone far enough. Buffy stepped between them. 

“Connor! Stop!”

He turned on her, eyes blazing. “You knew too.”

She didn’t bother to deny it. “I did.”

“And you let him…” 

“And we’ll go now. Together. To help him.”

His stance, his expression, didn’t change a whit. “Why? If you ever loved him, _why? _How could you stay here _this_ long, knowing he was in trouble; why did you even let him go? Do you hate him now, or…”

How could she even answer that, except the last, and truthfully. “No, I don’t hate him. I could never hate him.” /God knows it’d be easier if I could; but somehow, I just can’t./ “I just did what he asked. I pretended, because he needed me to.” She reached out to touch the raging, grieving boy’s sleeve. “Because he’s lost everything. You, Cordelia, his team, this city. His abilities. His identity, even. Pretending so that he could still help… It was all he had left.”

“And what? Protecting his pride is worth his life to you?” The bitterness in that young voice was rampant and galling. 

“You don’t have what he’s had, and lost, kid,” Spike broke in, “and you haven’t done one quarter of the wrong he’s done. You’ve looked reformation down the throat once or twice, but you have no idea what it’s like to seek redemption. It’s a whole other bloody road.” His eyes cut to Buffy’s, concerned. “You want company?”

She considered it. Glanced out the window at the ever-present, looming pall. “I think we’ll need a ride. Groo can circle with us. Drop us off if it seems like he’s down there. Carry us away quick if we need it, or reinforce us if we need that. Get word back fast if we need reinforcements; but his horse-thing can’t carry a fourth person, and I don’t know if it’ll even go without him.”

“Yeah.” He stepped back, reluctantly conceding to the expedient. He had always been good at that. “We’ll hold down the fort.”

“We’ll be back soon.” The promise in her voice was written directly to him.

“Better be, or we’ll have to send another search party, and they’re tougher to organize on foot.” His cynical delivery did little to belie his concern. He really didn’t want her to be doing this, though he would never say it in mixed company. For which she was grateful. Time was he would have told her straight-up she was being an idiot if he didn’t like a plan she was about to put in motion… but back then he had been a lot less supportive, a little more ‘blunt voice of reason guy’.

He’d wait till she got home to tell her off, these days. Mostly he’d rant at her for scaring him half to death, then fuck her senseless for making him live for even one second with the terror of losing her. Which... Well, she really couldn’t blame him for that, since she’d done the same back at him on more than one occasion when he’d taken stupid risks in this dumb dimension lately. 

Just… Okay. Not as often as she did it. Which was kind of sad, honestly, considering this was a formerly insane, thrill-seeking vampire, here, versus the leader-type Slayer who supposedly should be all out of death-wishes, what with having already died two-and-a-half times and everything. But somehow dying a lot and then finally coming out of the other side of the resultant haze after a couple of years had made her feel… really _alive_ and kind of devil-may-care, like certain past vampires had once been, while being besouled (and maybe mixed a little with her DNA?) had slowed down said vampires and made them sort of a little more circumspect, a little more choosy and treasure-y about the meaning and the value of life… and why could they never just be on the same page at the same damn time? 

“You won’t need a search party,” she informed him staunchly, and, catching his face firmly with one hand, pulled him down by the chin in her cupped palm and kissed him very, very soundly before she turned and left without saying another word. /I’ll always come back to you./ And her blood sang to his, the truth of that promise sizzling between them. /I always have. It always, somehow, comes back to you, in the end./

She could feel his eyes following her as she headed out, had to fight herself not to look back. That never made it any easier, the looking back. She had learned that from long years of experience at missioning.

Connor fell in behind her as she exited through the garden doors, into the dusty remnants of plants long gone dead and mummified by the heat, the extreme desiccation of the arid environment. Groo was, of course, there, as always, grooming his weird demon-horse in his converted stable. “It is sad,” he informed them as they slipped into the tiny courtyard, “that this space has died. It was a lovely, living garden, once, full of light and color.”

“I’m sure it was,” Buffy began, barely looking around, but before she redirect him, Groo went rambling on in his reminiscences, as if there was not a care in the world. 

“Your father used to bring you here, Connor. He would sit just there, in the covered place, where the strange single sun of your world could not touch him with fire, and watch as beloved Cordelia would carry you out into the light. She would lift you; swing you about, and laugh.” A sad smile lit his eyes, making him look even more like a tragic hero from the cover of some romance novel. “She loved you as if she were indeed your mother…”

Connor looked strangely repulsed at this recital, his face closing down abruptly. “Yeah, that’s great. Look, Groo; speaking of my father, we need to go check out the ruins of Wolfram and Hart, and then maybe go on from there to a place a little ways to the west. Apparently Charles Gunn’s a vampire now—not sure if you heard that part since you were covering us from the air when we bailed—and he might have Dad.”

Groo lit up like a candle, every ounce of his gleaming, perfectly muscled body flickering from studied still-life into action!pose. “A rescue! Our stalwart friend requires assistance! Excellent; let us depart immediately! Cordelia; we must fly!”

The winged horse, predictably, began promptly tossing its head around with equal enthusiasm, as if it had found the day’s rest here at the hotel insufferably dull. They were as good as a pair, these two.

They mounted up, Connor behind Buffy so that she was uncomfortably sandwiched between two fairly large, beefy sorts—and, she had kind of forgotten what it was like to be so close to regular guys. They were _warm_. And moist. And they smelled very… mannish. 

Spike was always pleasantly cool and dry to the touch. She hated to say it, but she had come to prefer vampires, and she had to fight not to recoil from the press of sultry bodies all around her as the flight dragged on. Also, both of these guys were repressively brawny, though Connor less so than Groo. Still, he gave the impression of great potential to grow in that direction, his frame being structured similarly to his father’s… and when had she gotten so attuned to recent experience that she now not only preferred Spike’s more lithe form as a model for the male build, but was actually mildly perturbed by overwhelming size in comparison to her own relatively diminutive frame? Not that she had ever felt dwarfed from a standpoint of power, since she had sparred with Groo and knew they were fairly evenly matched, and no doubt she could take down ‘the cub’, as Spike called Connor, with little effort… but that didn’t mean she wanted to be loomed over all the time. 

These uncomfortable observations kept her occupied for a large proportion of the trip as they swept swiftly past the ruins of Wolfram and Hart—and God, that was a sight! The place looked like it had been the scene of a deliberate demolition!—circled the devastation, and coursed on. If Angel had been there for that disaster… he wasn’t there anymore. 

No one was. It looked like 9/11 down there. 

“Bear a little south of west,” she called in Groo’s ear at one point, having dragged him down enough for him to hear over the wind of their passage. He nodded and directed his beast to reorient. And again, a little later. And, once they were bearing down on the right neighborhood, pointed out the correct block and building cluster for him to initiate circling pattern. They did so, and hovered for about five minutes, watching. 

Nothing. No movement at all. Not even a sentry.

“Let’s go down,” Connor shouted in her hear, all but vibrating with his intense need to get in there and cause trouble. “Who knows how long he’s been in there with Gunn…”

“Not long,” Buffy reminded him, hand held up to cup her mouth so that her voice would actually travel back to his ear and not simply whip past and dissipate into nothingness. This was worse than riding a motorcycle at eighty miles per hour. Which, yeah, she had done, if briefly, when she had hitchhiked around LA before as Anne; and yes, those were memories best left to that other life, what with the trying to communicate where to be let off, and the hoping the guy would actually stop without requiring, well, _favors_ first. And the not wanting to have to beat the guy up if that happened, and the confusing and uncomfortable, almost wearying arousal that came from the endless, rumbling vibration penetrating the numbness of the mind with the invasive needs of a body that had never been sated after that first…

Actually, now she thought about it, Spike rode motorcycles, didn’t he? And that posed some interesting possibilities for future interactions, didn’t it? 

Later. Business now. “Remember, they had to walk all this way first. Believe me, that took half a day at least, before they got into whatever they got into…”

“The dragon never came back,” Connor pointed out grimly, voice whipped by the wind but still stark. “Think your timetable’s off.”

/Damn./ “Groo, let’s set down on that roof right there.”

They landed with some pretty serious stealth—apparently horsey demons were better at that than batty ones—and they slipped awkwardly off one by one. Groo nodded at her to take point, since she had been here before, and she moved forward to try the roof access door. 

It opened easily. Not even barred. Which worried her, as did the lack of vamp-sensation. 

That lack of the tinglies continued as they penetrated into the ex-hotel, such that by the time they had gained the downstairs arena it was clear the whole damn place had been cleared out. No vamps, no sign of any nesting for a while. “Guess this is a bust. They must’ve moved on after Spike and I found them before.”

“Well that’s just great,” Connor complained. “How the heck are we gonna find him _now?”_

She wasn’t sure, and she definitely didn’t want to prod deeper into the old hotel in case it had been rigged with traps. “If I was Gunn, I’d keep a lookout on this building. Booby-trap it in case my uninvited guests came back. Set up an ambush, even…” She looked around. “Angel and Spike both said he was a smart guy who grew up fighting vamps on the streets. If that was the case, he wouldn’t’ve moved too far away. He’d want to keep an eye on the place…” She turned around and headed back up the stairs, Groo watching her with admiration. 

“Wait? We’re just gonna go? You don’t think we should at least check?”

She didn’t bother to look back at the inexperienced kid. “There are no vamps here. I’d feel ‘em.”

“It must be a skill of great use, to be able to sense the _van-tal_ in a man.”

She shot the long-haired champion a startled glance. “Uh, sure.” /What was this _‘van-tal’_ business? Some kind of Pylean mumbo-jumbo?/ She thought she remembered hearing they’d originally pulled Fred from that dimension.

No time to figure it out now, as she headed back up through the echoingly empty building, all through the long shaft of fire-escape stair. 

They gained the top step without incident. And, of course, found that the door would not open from the inside. Not even with a Slayer kick. She sighed as she turned. “I knew it. Trap.” Frowned at Groo. “Should have left you to guard the door.”

“I hope it was automatic. I do not wish to have left Cordelia to fight alone.” Groo gripped his blade tighter, clearly spoiling for a fight. “So. Then it is to be glorious combat, or some devious puzzle to be solved, which we must scarce escape with our lives…”

Did he always have to face these ‘looking death down the throat’ scenarios like they were the most inviting moments since sex was invented? “Probably. I’d watch where I step.”

Connor turned back around, looking if anything just incredibly impatient. “And then what?”

She was starting to get irritated with his adolescent pique. It was like talking to a male Dawn. “Then we fight whoever is waiting for us outside the doors, catch one, and make ‘em squeal so we can find your father.”

“Excellent plan, Champion Buffy. Shall we proceed with the challenge?”

“I suppose so. I’m not getting any younger.” /Note to self not to underestimate Charles Gunn anymore. And… I’m sorry, Spike./

They made it back down to the third floor of the building, the one where Betta George had been held prisoner. That was where the first trap was sprung; right there on the landing.

It made a difference when you were ready for them, but that didn’t change the fact that being a ball in a deadly game of Mousetrap really, really sucked.

***

It was a long-ass gauntlet, fighting through bizarre traps made out of everything from swinging wooden hammers to rigged blades. Like being in a movie, and was this Gunn guy really just that much of a film buff, or was this some holdover from some past thing? Buffy remembered something Spike had mentioned in passing a while back, about Gunn’s having been a street kid at one point, who’d had to fight off vamps using basically just ingenuity and leadership skills, so maybe all these traps dated from that era. In which case, kudos to the vampire, but kind of ironic that now the things were being used _by_ a vampire _against_ the people coming after him.

It didn’t matter who was the intended target. Either way, the devices were hella effective. Every one of their party had some small wound or another by the time they made it out of that vast arena that was Gunn’s ex-headquarters. But they all made it out intact. And, watching him in close-quarters, Buffy had to admit that for all his occasional whininess, young Connor had the moves. He was a strong, disciplined, well-trained fighter. God knew what he’d been put through to get there, considering what she’d overheard about his childhood. She knew a thing or two about learning too much too young to get to a place like that, where the moves were second nature and the discipline was discipline-y. 

He had had someone riding him hard, for sure; and not gently. And he had clocked field time. 

Poor kid. Probably he deserved some of his underdeveloped emotional range now that he remembered more of whatever that had been like. She for one knew from personal experience that that kind of emotional confusion could be, well, kind of a side-effect of that kind of one-sided, traumatic youthful experience. 

Though Buffy couldn’t official condone the whole mind-rape thing, considering her own experiences and those of her friends, probably the only stability the kid had ever known was the happy-childhood-graft he’d gotten thereafter. Without it, she wondered if he would even be sane. 

From what she had heard from Lorne, apparently Groo had had a relatively crap childhood as well; one spent in slavery and combat, but he was bizarrely friendly despite that. Course, he was also part-demon, so maybe that had contributed to his somehow keeping his weirdly sunny disposition despite. In any case, it was almost scary how cheerful he could be about life as he hacked his way through any and all roadblocks like they were nothing and remained as emotionally available as a teddy bear. 

The weirdo. 

Good fighter, though. 

Hence, they made it. And, once they’d won through to the doorway, they survived the abrupt appearance of their escort; partially because it was expected, and partially because of what Xander had once called Buffy’s ‘spider-sense’. Thought it really wasn’t. It was a vamp-sense, and had been vastly refined over the years and deaths since that thoughtless quip, so that she could assess almost the exact nature of the unfriendly. /Maybe someday I might even get to the point where I can figure out if they’re more or less so, before I even have to fight ‘em. Spike can’t be the only anomaly in the vamp world, right?/ Well… Time for that internal debate later. The ‘weight’ and ‘flavor’ of her tinglies informed her as they approached the exit that their receiving party consisted of no more than ten vamps, all fledges with maybe only one or two more seasoned vamps in the mix. All very unfriendly. 

They dusted the bunch easily, saving one fledge to use as a guide. And were walked swiftly from thence over to another building on the far end of the block. “There,” the fledge jittered anxiously. “Leader’s in there. Now let me...”

They dusted him, contemplated how to get in, while the waves of heat rolled over them. Buffy sipped some of the water she brought, offered the bottle to Groo and Connor. Connor took a sip. Groo declined, eyes on the sky. “I will be fine, Friend Buffy. See? My Cordelia comes! She carries my water in her panniers.” 

The door lock on the hotel’s roof-access must have been automatic after all, or else the winged beast had escaped whatever detail had come to bar it after them, for the dark animal soared down to meet them, allowed them to clamber back on, took off easily to deposit them on yet another roof. This one, though, did have sentries. “Do-over,” Buffy told Connor as she staked the first. He grinned mirthlessly as he flexed his fists and rammed one into the second’s vamped-out mug, and wow; he really had inherited vamp-strength. Good thing he’d missed out on the blood-thirst along with the sun allergy, or he’d be a problem.

“This attempt will go better,” Groo agreed, taking off a head.

It was over quickly, and they headed into the dark interior. Which, interestingly, did not feel as if it were swarming with vamp-action. 

If the back of Buffy’s neck was any indicator, it actually was pretty light on the vamps down there. Like, maybe there was one. Two, tops; and not very old vamp-vibe at that. Which, you wouldn’t think, with…

/Well, if it’s Gunn, he’s not all that old/ she supposed, /but you’d think he wouldn’t be alone in there with Angel. You’d think he’d keep at least one or two flunkies around…/

They heard the voice a little bit before they hit the bottom level. “…I’m just saying. You’ve never been able to interpret any prophecy right, Wes, and you know it. You got it wrong the first time, and you probably got it wrong the last time! That damn thing was written by some serious, ancient, interdimensional lawyers, and you and I both know I might just as easily be the one to Shanshu as our boy Angel, here; especially since, A, he signed his rights away, and B, I think he ain’t gonna make it much longer.”

/Oh, God./ That was Gunn’s voice. She distinctly remembered it. And… It didn’t sound like Angel was doing well. Though, what he was saying indicated that he was, at least for the moment, still alive, which was a plus.

Connor didn’t seem to consider it a positive. He growled and hit a higher gear. She fell right into his wake, Groo immediately behind them.

“That paperwork was never filed, I can assure you. There was no time.” A very familiar voice echoed in response, ringing on the still air. “You must know you’re wrong, Charles; that you’ve been deluded. Your visions are not coming from the Powers That Be. You are being used; and not by the side of good.”

/_Wesley?_/ Was that why he’d vanished from the Hyperion? To follow Angel?

“How do _you_ know?” the vampire formerly known as Charles Gunn screamed. “I’m tryin’ to get us all back _home!_ He’s the one who _got_ us all here! Now, I’m thinkin’ that means I’m the good guy in this scenario, not Angel, and I’m also thinkin’ that if someone gets to Shanshu out of this mess, it’s gonna be the guy who gets everyone _back!”_ The voice calmed back into that relaxed sense of style Buffy remembered from that one quick meeting in Spike’s apartment before everything had literally gone to hell. “The vampire _with_ soul, not the vampire with _a _soul. Especially since now there’s two of those to muddy up the waters. ‘Cause we all know there’s only _one_ of me. The one who _didn’t_ ask for this! _I _deserve to be human again! And I’m gonna make it happen! _After_ I save all of us!

“And that means killing _him_.”

/Oh, wow…/ That was a heck of an interpretation.

“Angel’s already been made human…”

Gunn’s voice went cold. “That’s what’s made him a dead man.”

/No./ That last gave her feet wings. She crowded at Connor’s heels, and they tumbled down the last of the clanking stairs and into a nightmare scene.

Gunn stood in the middle of the floor, in the orange light from a bank of filthy, dust-covered windows set high in the warehouse wall. Wesleys’ ghost hovered above him, the aureate light gleaming through his incorporeal form to break and illuminate some bundle at his feet, lying in a puddle of darkly-gleaming…

/Oh. God./

Angel was a crumpled pile at Gunn’s boots, bleeding out from what looked like dozens of wounds; as crushed and broken-looking as he had been the day Buffy had first encountered him in Wolfram and Hart in their first days here in this dimension. He wasn’t moaning. He wasn’t even twitching. She wasn’t even sure if she could see him breathing, but she thought… maybe his lips were moving? 

In the instant it took them all to pile out onto the concrete floor, Gunn looked up, showing off a scar under one eye and a deeply bitter expression. Realized that he was no longer alone with his prey. And his familiar human visage vanished as he promptly vamped out. 

God, he was an unpretty vampire. Spike was a gorgeous one; sort of a more feral form of himself. Angelus… scary, but manageable. A little too saw-toothy, maybe. She had often wished, in the past, that he had looked more like this; less like himself, when he’d gone evil. Because Gunn? 

The problem with him was that he had such a sweet, really nice and attractive baby face and such smooth brows to start with that the huge equipment required of the dentition caused a complete restructuring of his features that made him utterly unrecognizable. 

Which, actually? Kind of helped. It would be like dusting a stranger. “Hey, Connor!” Gunn sassed as they ranged themselves across the floor space to give themselves fighting room. “Let me guess, man. This is where you give me your Inigo Montoya speech.”

“No,” Connor answered, expression unchanging. “I’m just gonna dust you.”

“Well then, c’mon, kid. Show me what you got.”

She kind of thought Connor should get the first shot at it, so she let him have a run at the guy. She swung wide, though, ready to take the vamp from behind while he was distracted.

Gunn was ready for that though, and fought in a circling pattern that kept them both always at his front. And, unfortunately, Connor was not used to fighting in concert with anyone else, and did not seem to get the unspoken drift of her movements well enough to work with her. He in no way did anything to bring the vamp around so his back was to Buffy. All he saw was _‘strike’, duck, ‘strike’_.

Groo, to her surprise, wasn’t in the fight. He had gone to check on Angel.

“His wounds are mortal. He will not last the hour.”

/No./

“Serves him right. That’s how he left me!”

/Seriously? You knew the risks! That’s how you _wanted_ to go out!/ “Get up here, Groo, and help us take this guy out!” Maybe with three combatants to deal with, he wouldn’t be able to keep his front posted to everyone.

Groo moved away from Angel to join them. Which was when Gunn started to have serious trouble. He moved away from Angel’s sodden form, seeking a wall to put his back against. They continued working him, trying to spin him. He was, Buffy had to admit, a serious combatant; clever and damn fast as he whirled from one attacker to the next without fail. She had never fought a single vamp with three superior fighters and _not_ managed to take the thing out within a second or two. 

And he was little better than a fledge. Damn; all those years of fighting against vamps had really paid off for Gunn when it came to knowing his own weaknesses and how to combat them. 

Of course, it probably helped him that she and her two helpers were seriously getting in each other’s way. This whole fighting in a group thing? Really not working for her. Of course, fighting beside anyone else tended to make her realize how much she preferred fighting alongside Spike; made her miss the clockwork moves, the thrill of their synchronicity. Of being able to predict where he would be without looking; of being able to pass him a weapon, spin to meet him, send him a combatant, and of knowing that he would be precisely _there_. Of knowing when he would send something her way; a weapon if she had lost hers, or was in need. Something to kill to get his back free. Just, the sheer, breathless _rightness_ of it. 

The closest she had ever come, other than with Spike, and been with Faith, but there had always been too much of a feeling of competition in that. An edge of violence about to happen, a feeling that at any moment they might turn on each other like two cats in a yard fighting over the same territory, once the mouse had been dispatched. 

With Spike… the yard had never truly been in question, and they both knew it, no matter his protestations. When he fought beside her, there had never been the worry that he would turn on her. He would keep his word. And when they had fought against each other… Equal satisfaction. A true test.

Fighting with anyone else only highlighted for her how very ill-suited she was at being a team player. She was much better at fighting on her own, because that was everything she had been taught. Nothing in the Slayer manual had been designed for group combat. It was all singles moves, and if there was one thing she had learned from all her years of studying skating… If you’d trained for singles, you couldn’t move to pairs unless you had the right partner. 

It was one thing to have Scoobies to protect. She had gotten used to that over the years; the fine balance between a little help and having to switch, at any moment, to rescue. But fighting with Spike; that was almost second nature. She didn't have to worry about him, to the point that he was almost like an extension of her body, something she hardly had to think about it. He was just _there_, doing exactly what she expected him to be doing at any given moment, because she knew exactly where he would be and she could predict his every move. She could depend on him to be there.

In comparison, fighting beside someone like Groo or Connor took thought, it took prediction, it took mental calculation; it was hard work. It was _not_ comfortable.

She ducked a swing from the damn kid that nearly took her head off instead of Gunn’s, and had to pull her own swing in as the little idiot got right into her arc. It was also damned frustrating.

She needed to buy time till she could figure this out; find the beats. Locate where to put herself in this stupid mess of a melee, since Connor wasn’t paying a damned bit of attention to anyone else’s bubble, and Groo, though better, was kind of all up in her footwork. “Where are all your reinforcements, vamp-king of Hell-A?” She had always fought as much with her mouth as with her hands. Might as well try for some quippage.

“I don’t need anyone else to kick all your butts.”

The bravado was kind of ridiculous, considering that whatever their shortcomings as a group, Gunn knew better than anyone the powers of the combatants arrayed against him. He’d known Groo for… well, however long he’d known Groo. He’d watched Connor grow up, or at least to a certain extent; maybe fought him. And he knew enough about Buffy by reputation—and seen her fight, if briefly—to at least be wary. Either he really thought a lot of himself, between his prior skills and his new vamp powers, or he was just talking big because he realized now he’d been a doof to sit in here alone with Angel. Which, why would he even…

/Oh./ He had sent away any of his remaining people so that he could be alone to gloat over his former employer. 

/Well, for a smart guy, that was your one dumb move./ And it would be his downfall.

He did move fast, though. And he was a nimble bastard. He kept sliding away from them, till in the end, what with one stupid choice and another from her side, the let him sidle far enough away that they had ranged up off a side-stair and onto a catwalk. 

He had found his ground. They could only attack one at a time, here. “You’re not gonna win,” the vamp gloated, eyes flashing gold, delighted at his own prowess. 

“Wrong,” Connor told him grimly, and to Buffy’s surprise and, honestly, somewhat vexed admiration, he leaned back and kicked as hard as he could at just the right moment. And sent the chortling vamp backward, right through the nearby window. 

/Well, that’s one way to end a stupidly-extended fight, I guess./

They watched, panting, as Gunn sailed out through the glass and down about thirty feet to land, one assumed, on the concrete outside the building. “That should keep him for a minute or two,” Buffy opined wearily. /Stupid vampires and their dumb not getting hurted-ness./

“I will bar the doors below,” Groo exclaimed, and raced down the nearest ladder.

Buffy turned to follow. “Connor, help him. Keep Gunn out; there’ve got to be other doors…”

“I need to see my father!”

“Connor.” She turned back. Caught him hard by the sweating arms. “Listen. If we don’t get Angel out of here, and fast, he’ll die. And the only way to do that is if I heal him fast enough so that he stops bleeding out. That means doing a spell I’ve already done once for him. So you have to let me do that, okay?”

He stared at her, uncomprehending. “I…”

She had to be able to think. Remember the stupid spell. Remember how to say it right. One wrong word, and… Her belly was in knots just thinking about it. Knowing what could happen if you did magicks wrong. What could happen just… anyway. 

Angel. Dying. 

God. 

No way she could seem anything less than completely confident now, though, if she was to get Connor’s cooperation. Because all he could think of right now was getting his last moment with the father he had barely gotten to know. 

“I’ll save him for you. You have to trust me. I’ve already done this. But I need you to keep Gunn out or I won’t have time. And if he interrupts me, your father will _die.”_

The worst part was, if she did this wrong, she was robbing him of the chance for that final moment. And she _knew_. She knew what it was like to _not_ have it. To spend your life missing that closure. But...

This was _necessary_.

Amazingly, Connor trusted her. He didn’t know her, really, but he trusted her. He went. 

/_God_./

Kneeling beside Angel was the worst. There was _so_ much blood it was almost terrifying. And he was so cold, so still… He was terrifyingly pale, lips no longer moving, if she hadn’t imagined that. Maybe he was in some kind of coma, or at least his eyes seemed glassy, and did not react to her presence. Not cloudy, like…

/No!/

His skin was clammy, his chest barely rising and falling. She had to lean forward and lay her cheek next to his mouth to even feel it; to be sure she wasn’t imagining it. It was like with Mom…

/Don’t _think_ of that. Don’t think…/ 

She had to kneel in the blood. It seeped into the knees of her pants instantly. Soaked her, up to her lower thighs, down along her shins… /Oh God…/ 

Her mind was a shambles. She had to fight to keep it in order; to keep the panic from rising; the one that drowned, the one that made the steps of CPR recede. This was like that. She knew. She remembered. /I know this. I know…/ What were the words? /Postu… Postulah, Inuriehn? Obri…/

She pulled the knife from her belt as if in a trance. Slashed over the old scar in her palm and barely felt it. The left hand, as it was the least-used one. Spike would be so mad, but… And as the blood spilled out, held it out to drip over Angel’s still form. To join the blood already seeping everywhere, to color his wine-colored button-down. Unchanged, really, except to darken it still further. So wet, already, everywhere. And the words, too, flowed, spilling from her lips. She, she knew, was pale as he. His lips, no longer moving. 

So her lips moved for him. _“Postulah, Inuriehn, Coripatae, Confierza. Obrigah. Postulah, Trunicateh, Coripatae, Confierza. Obrigah. Postulah, Sauciehn, Coripatae…”*_

***

The flight back to the Hyperion would live in her nightmares for a very long time. The spell hadn’t worked as well without the magicks programmed into the book she had used the first time around, back at Wolfram and Hart. At best it had just kept Angel from dying, and probably that only because fancy-words-plus-Slayer-blood. It was therefore a long and dreadful journey made largely of counting faint breaths and heartbeats through the reverberations under their hands, the sodden body of Angel held in between herself and Connor limp and twitching with agony (Groo had instructed his mount to fly them back while he walked). 

It made it worse somehow to hear Connor chanting to his father the entire way while Buffy ‘drove’ their mount, his voice broken and pleading. “You can do this, Angel… _Dad_. _Please_. Don’t leave. I already lost everyone; Cordy, Holtz, you can’t… Just, please. I need you. Keep fighting. Just, please, stay. I promise. I’ll learn from you. I’ll listen. I’ll get to know you. I _want_ to know you. Just, stay. _Please_…” 

She had been there. God, it hurt to hear; that desperate pleading with a Higher Power that may or may not have its own agenda, may or may not give two shits about what you needed. By the time they made it back to the hotel she couldn’t see anymore. Her eyes were almost completely obscured by unshed tears.

Angel’s healing coma lasted three days—or, you know, one dimensional day. Whatever—long enough for Groo to get back. Actually, Groo made it back a lot faster than expected, and with happy news. He returned while they were still doing their best to get Angel comfortably out of his blood-saturated clothes and into the bed of the room Lorne said had been his in the hotel before they’d moved out. Came flying in on Cordy the dragon, who had no doubt been anxiously circling the warehouses ever since Angel had gone inside with Gunn, only to fly off to seek help, or maybe get a drink or something, when the rescue party had arrived. Anyway, apparently it had found their straggler on its return journey. 

Cue one big happy reunion, with the dragon settling in in the garden ‘stable’ with its flying companion, the other ‘Cordelia’, while Connor sat vigil next to his unconscious father and Buffy went aside with Spike, Lorne, Groo, and the rest to give a rundown on their _mano a mano_ with Charles Gunn, self-styled vampire-king. 

Spike was furious with her. Buffy knew that without having to bother to look him in the eye. Not that she thought he believed she’d specifically gone out looking for trouble, or done anything particularly thrill-seeky or stupid. No. She knew he didn’t believe that any more than she did. He was just reflexively mad in that, ‘How dare you almost leave me’ way; the same way she would be if he had been the one to come back from a semi-shambles of a mission like this one. 

/Well, at least we came back with the objective in one—mangled—piece/ she consoled herself as she fiddled with the bandage on her hand and watched him smolder at her from across the room. He chipped in on the resultant planning-and-options meeting in only the most necessary of interactions, and that in the most clipped and distracted manner imaginable. And the entire time his eyes blazed on hers like blue fires. 

By the end Lorne was really starting to look hunted as his gaze darted between them. Apparently the ‘resonances’ were seriously impinging on his empathetic ears.

She needed to get her guy out of here.

Finally the meeting wound down with a last few anxiously muttered comments about security. “He knows this place. He could hit us back anytime.” “Yeah, sure he does. And we could leave, but this is a good, defensive spot. And I doubt he’ll come after us now that he knows he can’t beat our people…” “Look; we have too many wounded to move. If he does attack, we’ll just have to be ready.” “But what if he…” 

She and Spike could do as much good hashing out their own business as they could sitting here watching the tennis-match that was this useless, batting back and forth of a debate. This was the kind of inane crap that made Buffy crazed with impatience; made her half-wish Faith had been in LA as well when all this had gone down. Her sister-Slayer would have hated all this vague talk-is-cheap bullshit. She would have just slapped a knife through the middle of the table at some point and told them all to stop pussyfooting around and get to work. Make a freaking decision one way or another and then just stick with it. 

Heck; at this point Buffy was pretty damned close to doing the deed herself. 

This wasn’t a hierarchy, though. It was more of a committee. Which was irritating as hell and made everything take forever, made every move all suggestive and tentative… but it was what they had to work with. No one would thank her for being take-charge-Buffy here, even if it was just to get things frigging _moving _so that they could get out of here. Because she really needed to drag Spike off somewhere private and let him blow off his no doubt impressive head of steam; for her part if only just to have something to _do_. A good shouting match sounded downright sporting about now. /I miss Beverly Hills./ At least there they had been able to call their own shots. Though, technically she had been still been leading as part of a team, and that from behind the scenes; and wow. She hadn’t realized how stifled it was beginning to make her feel, here; how stymied by working through others. 

Slayers, she was beginning to realize, weren’t really meant to be team players. They were always alone, whether in the lead or just flying solo, but not so big on the group-think. Even with the Scoobies and their constant questioning of her choices, in the end everyone had always known; the buck eventually stopped with her. She got the final say. It had never been questioned; or at least, not since she had graduated from Giles’ School of Slayer Prep. (That came with the dying.)

/Well, mostly they didn’t question me. Unless it came to my love life. Or when it came time to kick me out of my own house. But for the most part…/

For the most part, hierarchy had been key, and the only reason the dual approach had worked so long with Spike was he was some kind of bizarre exception to her no-partners rule. /Probably because he’s never had a problem with letting me have the final word./ Which made her sound like a total bitch, but… Really it just made her feel respected, when so often she hadn’t been in her regular life. By the Council, by teachers, by parents, by other men. Not even her own Watcher, in the end. But Spike…

It calmed her, knowing it, and she went to him as the rest dithered over a decision that would not be made today, anyway. Caught his hand. “C’mon.”

His eyes on hers were hard, his hand loose and uncompromising. “Please.” 

She could practically feel Lorne begging, through his abrupt silence, for them to take it somewhere else. And after a brief hesitation, Spike came.

They didn’t speak as they headed upstairs; or at least not till they got to the top of the sweeping staircase. “Which way are we?” she inquired in low tones. It felt almost harsh to break the silence. 

“A couple doors down from Illyria.” God, his voice was taut. “Near enough in case I was needed. Didn’t want to be at the other end. Smelled too much like Peaches. Figured he used to stay that way…”

“You were right.” Angel’s suite had in fact ended up being down on the opposite end of the hall from the direction in which Spike had automatically turned that first day to deposit his Fred-like burden. 

Communication cut off again; a radio going out of tune, as he strode swiftly to a door one down and a bit catty-corner from Illyria’s. He opened it without a word, held it for her, every line of his body from the arm on down stiff as a board. With only remnants of his eyeliner he looked like he so often had back in Sunnydale during that one hard, awful year; stark and pale and hurt from head to toe. He looked absolutely infuriated; enough so that just standing in proximity to him made every hair on her body do the static-cling thing, and the blood rush through her like he was a magnet and she was made of iron filings, because she was some kind of stupid Renfield right now; his mostly-human barometer, and, /Oh, man. He is in a _mood_./

When the door closed behind her she expected one of three reactions. Either he would start in by demanding just ‘what the bloody hell’ she had been ‘playing at’, going into Gunn’s place and trying to get herself killed like that; why _wouldn’t_ she think he’d have left traps if there was no sentry (a question, by the way, she had been asking herself ever since they’d hit the vamp-less stairs of the place, so it was a fair assessment). Or, she figured, he would just shove her up against the door, eyes blazing into hers, and demand to know why she went around trying to get herself killed, damn it (an approach that would most likely end in some incredibly hot, deeply frustrated sex, and would only culminate in actually talking things out maybe, oh, sometime in the next hour, if that). Or, highly likely scenario number three: he would throw a bottle of something against a wall first to vent his most violent emotions before proceeding directly to step one, and from thence to step two.

She was prepared for any of the three. Actually, some of them sounded rather entertaining, which probably said bad things about her preferred relationship style or something, but she’d worry about that later. 

What she did not expect was for him to walk right past her, over to the bed and sit down; lower his head into his hands, bury his face there, and say, muffled and agonized, “Are you trying to destroy me? That it?”

She was completely and utterly nonplussed. “Wait, what?”

He didn’t look at her. His head just sank deeper, his hands now folding up over his scalp, fingers digging into his hair. And his muffled voice went inexorably on, speaking into probably his elbows at this point. “Christ, Buffy, I can’t even walk into the sun, here. And we’ve already proven how shite I am at staking myself.”

/Wait, we have? When was this? And wow, so much for a good fight./ “You’re serious right now.”

His head lifted, and he stared at her, and she could swear there was a faint hint of a red rim around his eyes, which, why? They had made sure he had eaten right before they’d marched to battle; and he’d had a snack from her. Could stress make a vamp anemic? “You said, back before we came. When Angel was handing out assignments; that you weren’t leavin’ my side, just in case. Not for any money. But I have to let you, sometimes, here, to do this Champion business. And I know it’s part of the deal.” His voice cracked a little then. “Always has been. Always will be. You’re the bloody One. But I’ve been your left hand since Christ knows when, and now I don’t get to be; and do you know how that _feels_, Buffy? To sit back here and do fucking _nothing?_ To just _wait_, and not even be able to be there to watch your back? Just pray you’ll make it and come back to me, and not even have the option to be the one to help you? To _try?”_

/Oh./ If she put herself in his shoes… /_Oh_./ Yeah, that was really… 

He must have been just going nuts, back here. And then she came back and told this story of near-death hijinks, and…

He looked away, back down into his hands, and scrubbed one over the back of his neck again, while the other hovered uselessly in the air. “I never thought, after all these years, it would become so galling, but… Maybe it’s the soul. Maybe I’ve gone soft. Gotten weak. Or maybe it’s the love, now there’s no hate left, no wantin’ you out of me anymore. All I want is you _in_ me; more, forever, till you possess my All.” He laughed then; a strained, mirthless, self-mocking laugh, and eyed her from his tormented periphery like a death’s head. “Wanted to possess you, yeah, back before. But all I ended in doing was givin’ everything up.” His eyes on hers were steady, unyielding. “You _own_ me, luv. You possess me like a bloody ghost. Like you’re the soul, not wee William. You’re inside my veins, in my blood, in every corner of me. Own me; the All of me. Never owned myself that way.” A scoff that might have been a sob, if it wasn’t so twisted up. “And now if you go—if I lose you—there’ll be nothing left of me.” He looked away, back down into his hands. “Nothin’ but ashes.” 

/Oh God…/ She had thought he was angry. He wasn’t. 

He was terrified. And so far beyond angry about it, long past tired of feeling it, here, that it was killing him. And the fact that he hadn’t said a damn word, for months, was just… _“Spike,”_ she whispered.

“No.” He straightened. Tightened up, pulling himself together. “I’ll do, Buffy. I manage. I just didn’t realize how hard it would be to watch you go off with someone else; battle after battle, and then _this_. And I know we all have to go where we’re needed in this business, but…”

She sighed and moved a step closer. “Spike. I _hated_ it. If it helps.”

His eyes jerked up to meet hers. 

“Every minute of it. It was awkward and weird and I had to think too much and work too hard just to make the simplest thing happen. I _hate_ fighting beside anyone who isn’t you.” She couldn’t quite bite back the half-laugh, half-sob. “_God_, I wish you were there. I always do; but _especially_ this one. It would have gone so much _smoother_…” 

“Yeah? Groo’s ‘mighty thews’ get in the way, was it?” he snarked, trying his damnedest to come back from pain to his old wit. And his eyes, lifting to meet hers, were doing their best to sparkle in appreciation of her offering. 

He still thought she was just saying it, though. Just as he had thought it so many other times, damn him. ‘_Yeah, I hear you say it, but…’ ‘No you don’t, but thanks for sayin’ it.’_

/Dammit, Spike, I’m being real here. When are you going to start _trusting_ me?/ “Groo at least knows how to work with someone. Mostly it was Connor that made me want to kill him. He solos in a group.”

Spike’s lips twitched as he watched her, and fine. “Not that I’m one to talk, but I needed him to get Gunn to circle so I could get behind him, and he was paying zero attention. He was all personal-vendetta guy. Which I get; he’s young and his father was on the floor bleeding out in front of him; but get with the program. You’re playing on a team, here.” She sighed heavily in remembered irritation and caught her lover’s eye. “You and I would’ve had that vamp in three seconds, the way we work. With Connor and Groo… Ten minutes. Maybe more.” /Once you get used to the right partner, going back to singles leaves you feeling all hollow. I learned that in the last year. And skating with other partners… Just, no. It’s never the same./

She knew there was sparkle there now. “Sounds bloody tedious.” 

“Yeah. It was. Most of the risk was in that fight, not in that stupid booby-trap thing. There were just too many of us. We got in each other’s way, and no one had a style that meshed. I almost brained that idiot kid just to get him out of my swing-range, and Groo kept stepping on my footwork, and they both let Gunn get up on a catwalk so that he could narrow the approach. The only reason it didn’t take twice as long was because Connor pulled a cowboy and kicked him out of a window.”

Spike eyed her from the bed, more animated now and watching her with some interest. “So does this mean next time I get to come?”

She moved closer. Crouched to catch his hands. “Please. I can’t handle these rookies. I’ve never had to think twice when I fight with you.” She smiled into his eyes. “With beside, with against…” Saw the grin bloom there, slow but delighted, in answer. “We’ve always meshed, always worked. And I could always trust it. I knew where you’d be, and I knew what to do.”

He pulled in a deep, unnecessary breath, and when he let it out, all the tension was gone from him. “That’s because we’re all gut, luv,” he whispered, and lifted a hand to her hair. Caressed the stray lock away from her eyes, patted it back into place where it had escaped her ever-present ponytail. “Blood and instinct, from the start.” 

She smiled back. “I know. I figured that out when I came to get you. Our problems always kick off when I start thinking too much.”

His hand slid down, tugging at the band that held her hair in place. The prelude to lovemaking, here. Whatever state it was in, he always preferred her hair loose. “Yeah. Don’t do that, pet. It messes with the footwork.”

“I know.” /And we’ve been dancing since the beginning. You’ve told me that so many times… and I just never could listen. Till now./ She stood. Pulled him to his feet and into her arms. “You know, speaking of thinking, I had three scenarios in mind for what was going to happen when we got into this room…”

“Yeah?” he queried, sounding entertained, and watched her with his arms now comfortably seated around her waist. 

“Mmhm.” She shook her head to free her hair, feeling the prickles of pleasure as her scalp loosened. “I was prepared for a fight. Sounded fun, after that endless meeting…”

“Bloody lot of talking and nothing accomplished.” Disgust laced his tones, even as his eyes lit, watching her hair rustle down around her shoulders.

“Exactly. Or, I thought maybe we’d just have some incredibly hot, fast sex first and get it out of our systems…”

The low rumble started in his chest; approval, maybe, or amusement. “I like the way your mind works.”

“Sometimes,” she cautioned. “Or I thought maybe you might throw something before you started telling me I was… what is it? Off my bird?”

That earned her a full-on chuckle. “Then the sex, is it?”

“Probably.”

“And all this talking we’re doing was meant to happen last, I’ll wager.”

She fixed her eyes on his. “You know, somehow it didn’t occur to me to picture that coming first, no.” She loosed the soft smile she knew he loved; the one she saved up for special occasions. “Especially after all that downstairs…”

“Well. I’m all talked out, luv, if you want to get on to step two.”

She did her best innocent look, though she knew the anticipation in her eyes ruined the effect. “What, you want to throw some stuff?”

“Yeah.” 

He did manage to surprise her after all, when without warning her feet left the floor and she went sailing through the air onto the bed.

He ruined the surprise, though, when he stalked right in after her.

Not that she minded.

***  
  
  
  
  
*My "magicks" for this one, instead of goofy Google-translate Latin, wanted to be bastardized, Harry-Potter-like Portuguese-based gibberish, because reasons? I dunno. I like the sound of 'obrigado', and it all kind of grew from there?   
  
It was like one o'clock in the morning and I was having fun. If any of you speak Portuguese, don't throw things at me?   
  
My mental backstory for this spell ended up becoming that persons who had escaped slavery in Brazil would have done spells to heal folk who had been flogged or badly injured, hence the Portuguese. I dunno. I can headcanon anything at 2am.  
  
You know what? Let's just focus on the Spuffy, shall we? It's safer.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Plz note, read ch. 28 first; this is second chapter posted today**  
So... a lot of this is smut, and I make no apologies. Heh. Not that I feel I should have to, in present company, but...
> 
> Anyway, it's smut with a purpose? (once upon a time I was told by a reader in another fandom that when I veered back and forth from porn to 'vaguely ethical-poetic intellismut', lol. This one has both.)
> 
> Uh... I think other stuff happens in here as well. There's maybe some talking, a minor amount of discussing past angst for the hell of it... and I think a little vague reconnaissance / planning stuff. 
> 
> Meh. SMUT!

**B:**  
  
“You’re telling me you actually tried to _stake_ yourself when you were living with Xander?”

“Buffy… I was wearing a Hawaiian shirt.”

He meant it to be funny. Sardonic humor; but she wasn’t laughing as she closed her eyes and buried her face in his throat. Actually, right now she was so flooded with conflicting emotions that she couldn’t even parse them out; foremost among them a retroactive terror, followed swiftly by a heavy dose of shame. 

/I might have lost you before I knew what I had/ was predominant. Swiftly on its heels, /If you’d managed it, I’d’ve lost Dawn sooner. And, when I came back, you… God. Without you, that awful year… I’d’ve never made it./ Knowing what she owed Spike in that half-year of PTSD and crippling depression—her only focal point for realness and sensation in a dead and insane world—made it even worse, in retrospect, how she had ‘thanked’ him for what he had offered her. All she had managed to do, in the end, to make it right, had been to break it off… but she had never managed even to say the words. ‘Thank you. For holding me together when the entire world and everything in it was fighting to tear me apart.’ 

And to think that he might have been gone already. Dust, because he too, had already been lost, depressed, unrecognizable to himself. Without function, friends, family, reputation… “You knew, already, didn’t you? What it was like, before I found out.”

He didn’t need to ask what she meant, and his fingers slid very slowly up along her side. Paused, palm cupped behind her shoulder. “I knew.”

Which was why he’d understood. What she had needed, to fight her way back. Cold fire, and something of life to dig into. Real sensation, the grip of the physical to link her to the world. Something to take her anger out on, even if it had been him. And he had given that to her, selflessly, because he had _known. _He had been there first; had used, and held back everything, and harmed, and fought his way back up to life, and found a reason to go on… and needed more than anyone could ever give. 

/You knew. And because you could be there for me, I was able to know, when you died and came back. So that I could understand why you didn’t come to me, and forgive you./ And, god, would they always have the same experiences, in some kind of linked, tandem circle? 

She finally got it; all that he’d tried to tell her, and all the ways he’d tried to be there for her in that year, because she could do it for him, now. She hadn’t been able to hear him then, because she wasn’t really there. /But I can be here for you now, the way you were for me./ “I wish I knew. That you…” She felt so ashamed, now, in retrospect. Avoided his eye. “I can’t believe Xander _laughed_. I’d like to think that I… at least wouldn’t have done… that.”

He sighed heavily. “You wouldn’t’ve. You’d’ve told me to stop bein’ a self-pitying nit because it was annoying.”

/Oh, God, I probably would have./ “‘Cause that’s so much better. Much with the compassion. That’s me. Empathy-girl…”

“Didn’t have any reason to have any empathy with the neutered, undead killer, was it, pet? Not yet, any road.” His voice was so incredibly tight, behind the rueful.

/Okay, dammit, Mr. Philosophical./ Not that he wasn’t right, but it was hard sometimes to remember who she had been, then. Before the last couple of deaths, and before Spike had reinvented himself however many times to be whatever he thought she might need at any given moment. Before he had, in essence, killed himself to be reborn as what he felt she ultimately required of him so that she could completely let him in… and then died in reality so that he could feel worthy of a love she’d already given him, and oh god, all of this was so terrifying, because he might’ve… gone. Before all of it, here. There, even. Before… Them. 

Her fingers dug hard into flesh. Bone. Gripped his ribs so that he winced, and covered her hands with his own. “Bloody hell, Buffy…”

“I’m really, really glad you didn’t. That you were too inept or whatever. Or that you didn’t really want to, deep inside. Because you’re the most filled-with-life person I’ve ever met, dead or not, and I can’t _imagine_ this world without you in it, even though I’ve already had to _be_ there.” She released his chest to lift up and glare directly into his eyes. “Because losing you? Losing that energy that kept us both going? It _destroyed_ me, okay? So if I ever even _hear_ about you thinking of dusting again you’re gonna get it from me, you understand? I _own_ your ass, you stupid vampire! You don’t get to risk your stupid unlife, or get friendly with stakes, or walk anywhere near fire, or suns, or anything dusty ever again, dammit, because…”

He grabbed her upper arms, yanked her down, crushed her lips to his. And for a minute or so she forgot the rest of her terrified rant, because she was too busy being rolled over and pinned down and kissed very, very thoroughly by a vampire with excellent hands and far-too adept a mouth… and it really was unfair that he always managed to shut her up this way. “Dammit, Spike!” she breathed, when he finally lifted away, but he wasn’t listening anymore. 

“I love you, Buffy,” he told her, and caressed frustrated wisps of hair out of her eyes. “And I promise, I have no reason to do any such thing… as long as you promise not to leave me, first.”

Which was, you know, also unfair, since it led to her being very neatly trapped in the land of not taking too many risks. “You suck.”

He smirked at that, and rolled his tongue all speculatively. “Not as well as you, luv, but I have other talents.”

“Shut up. This is… coercion or something.”

The smirk widened, that prejudicial tongue tapping lightly behind his teeth. And his eyes, of course, were sparkling on hers as he pressed his hips against her to let her know that he had other forms of coercion close to hand. So to speak. 

After a second or two she sighed and rolled her eyes at him, because he was irrepressible and full of life, and she would keep him forever, because she loved him back. Kind of deliriously and sometimes in an almost crazed way, when he did crap like this; but the rest of the time in this quiet, steady way that just completely overwhelmed her sometimes, it was so… Perfect. Out of nowhere, and unexpected, and wholly wonderful, and… /And something we made ourselves. Something we built with our own bloodied, battered hands, with a lot of hard work and sacrifice. Not destiny, not something outside of us. This is _ours_./ “You’re ridiculous. And I love you. And I promise not to give you a reason.”

His eyes glowed. His entire demeanor. He dropped toward her neck to ravish her scar, but she pushed him away, to his clear shock. He sat back on his knees, one eyebrow quirked up; an expression which turned hungry and approving when she leaned forward and caught hold of his cock with her hand. “What,” she demanded, not even bothering to play innocent. “That wasn’t a hint, a minute ago?” 

“Well,” he managed, and now his voice was rough, “I’m not about to say no, but I wasn’t...”

“Shut up,” she told him again, and shoved him roughly down on the bed, his head half-hanging off the bottom edge. /You already took care of me, jeez/ Not that he'd ever think of it that way. That was always just as much for him as it was for her. /My turn now./ “Scoot over here. And let me give you another reason.”

“Christ, Buffy,” he muttered as he scooted, and now his voice was so low and hoarse that it could probably be classified as a whole other range than usual, “you could make a bloke hang about till the end of time, the way you…”

“Shh,” she told him firmly. “Don’t want to hear anything more from you for a while except begging for mercy.”

“Bloody hell.” He gripped the sides of the mattress, silver bracelets clinking and gleaming in the low light. 

She loved to make a thorough job of this. To really take the time. For one thing, it was fun to make him make all those desperate noises, and to know he was completely helpless, completely at her mercy. To make him tremble as she drew him up, first, to pull hard with lips and tongue against his foreskin; to worry at it and fill it and make it heavy with blood and sparking with sensation, so that he shook and groaned when she pulled it back to expose the thousands of tiny nerves inside that only ever saw attention when brought to life by his own touch, or hers. 

She loved the way he arched up, making inchoate sounds at the slightest brush of her tongue to his untouched glans, gleaming and already pink with blood and sensation; the way he trembled and jerked as she tongued his frenum, locked her lips there where foreskin and glans met, at the ring of intensely responsive flesh there, and tickled lightly until he shuddered. Loved the sensitivity of his cock, compared to others she’d touched, loved the hair-trigger reactions to her slightest breath, the faintest glide of her tongue. 

And she loved that he was as strong as he was sensitive. The dichotomy of the vampire. That she could love him gently, and he would come crying out her name. That she could love him roughly, and he would sing her praises for it. That he could revel in the former was no wonder, considering it was still new between them. The latter, though, remained a wonder. The fact that he had always given himself completely over to her in this way was honestly stunning, considering their relative roles. It bespoke the same kind of trust as she had given him, once upon a time. Their unspoken, mutual, ‘I won’t hurt you… much’, evolved now into a game and not that other, painful thing. 

Right now, he would want only a little of the latter, and mostly the former. But a little, yes. Because the edge meant _now_. It meant immediacy, and the promise that on the other side of fear and loss came love, again. 

So she scraped his frenum, very lightly, with her teeth. And the held breath exploded out of him as he jerked up, hard, toward her, his fingers punching holes in the mattress. “Buffy, oh, Christ, Buffy, oh, sodding fucking _Christ_…”

She made it all better then by bringing him in, hard and fast, hand and mouth working in concert, and he was moving now, couldn’t help himself; reining himself in only by dint of massive self-discipline while she worked him over. While she flicked her tongue in a quick and dirty ballet on the sliding, jittering skin under mouth and hand. While she moved him in and out of her mouth, keeping all those thousands of nerves alive in the trembling flesh of his foreskin, now stretched thin and yearning, and swirled at the end of each circuit around the slit of his cock until he broke. Until his hand was in her hair, clenching in rhythm with her mouth, and he was fighting, through clenched teeth. “Buffy, fuck, Slayer, please, fuck, Christ, Buffy, I…”

He sounded really, really good when he was all strained and incoherent. It made her feel unbelievably powerful. Once it might have disgusted her that this was the only way she had ever truly beaten him, but… Well. Now it was… kind of fun. 

She pulled away. Right before he could come, leaving him surging up into nothing, and his eyes snapped open, incredulous. Before he had a chance to do more than pout, though, she moved up, eyes on his, and, catching him in hand, lowered herself to bring him home. “Come here,” she told him softly, “and tell me.”

“Oh, fuck,” he whispered, and careened up to bury his face in her neck. Wrapped his arms tight around her waist, and moaned like she had ripped his undead heart out by the roots as she moved on him, slow and steadying. “Yours. You know I’m bloody yours. Fuck, Slayer, you…”

A purposeful clenching on him, to wreck him. And she stared into his eyes. “Put it all on me, Spike.”

His eyes snapped open, riveted on hers. “Oh, bloody fuck,” he whispered, and lost it, leaning back on his hands to thrust up as hard as he could, maddeningly fast. 

She let him have her for a while, pounding up hard. “Put it all on me,” she repeated, and was honestly surprised when he didn’t flip her over, lose himself. All he did was to loose one hand to clutch her ass hard, thrusting up blindly, teeth caught in his lip and face strained. But he did not flicker to game face, and he did not take over. And there was something pained, needy in his expression that said… he needed some kind of reassurance. 

/Alright./ “Then tell me,” she answered him. Grabbed his hair, pulled it back, shoved her hips hard against his to meet him.

He surged up, slamming bodily into her. “I’m… All… Christ… Buffy!”

She dragged him close as he came, and came apart, shaking in her arms. And held him, watched as he did. Stroked his cool back, kissed his disordered, messy hair. Once upon a time, she had been terrified of his trust in her; in bed, and in general. She had known that that it had come, for his part, from a kind of wistful wishful thinking. Had once feared that it meant he had seen her through rose-colored glasses, and had thus fought to beat it out of him. To make him see that she would never be what he thought he saw when he looked at her; only to find, too late, that he saw it, still, _despite_ what she had become. That there were no glasses. That he knew her… and loved her even with the clear eyes of the soul.

That too, had once been… terrifying. Now? 

Now it was _insurance_, and as she held him, gentled him down from climax, she could answer the unspoken question. “I’m yours, too. I promise, I’m not going anywhere.”

Pale, unguarded nails, clinging hard to draw her ever closer. “Don’t. Don’t bloody leave, and I won’t.”

She let out a breath, fingers trailing behind his ear. “You better not.”

***

One thing their little council did actually decide to accomplish in the interim, while they waited for Buffy’s little blood spell part deux to actually wake Angel up from his comatose, healing slumber, was to get started on the whole ‘find the demon-lords’ various strongholds and try to rescue their human chattel from cruel bondage’ portion of festivities. This process, which Nina called, tongue-in-cheek, ‘Reconstruction’, would end up taking weeks, and, Spike noted once, cynically, would hopefully end better than it had in the American South. 

Buffy, who had barely made it through US History, and that with Willow’s help, watched helplessly as that reference flew right over her head. “All I’m sayin’ luv, is we’ll hopefully be a kinder occupying force than past history tends to indicate most conquerors are.” 

“But… I thought the North were the good guys in the Civil War.”

Spike lifted an eyebrow. “Their cause was just, but the aftermath was carried out by people out to make a buck and rape the locals. You ever wonder why those bloody sods are still so hung up on their damned rebellion even now? Wavin’ a losin’ flag about and braggin’ about somethin’ treasonous got conquered two hundred years past? Proud to survive after what happened to ‘em after the war, wasn’t it?”

She gaped at him. “I just thought they were weird. I mean, the history books say…”

“You see ‘Braveheart’, luv?”

“Yeah. It was awful. I had to leave before I got halfway through.”

“Quote in the beginning says it all. The blokes who win are the ones who write the history. That time around, in your Civil War, they got part of the story right. Sometimes they do. Why wars are fought, or what have you. But afterward, you note the conqueror is always a magnanimous ruler, kind and fair.” His expression twisted a little. “But what people you know who’ve just been in a war are ever kind and fair to folks they’ve just spent however long poundin’ into the dirt and killin’ ‘em every chance they got?” 

That thought had honestly never occurred to her. 

“Most like what happens is you still wanna abuse ‘em every time you see ‘em, because what you see is the face of the bloke who killed your best friend in battle, yeah?” His eyes drilled into hers like blue augurs. “Or the demon who took away your first love…”

She swung away abruptly, feeling as if he’d stabbed her in the heart. 

“It’s human nature, pet,” he told her turned back very quietly. “We’d like to think we’re bound to be kind, beneficent rulers. And hopefully we can be at least fair. But we’re gonna have to work hard to find the line with each territory we take. Keep an eye on ourselves that we don’t just start loppin’ off heads when we see what’s been done to the powerless in those places. Because it most likely won’t have been the fault of whichever poor slob we chance to meet in the corridors as we walk by.”

/Or the next vampire I came across, who just happened to fall into my hands with a chip in his head and his heart in his hands./ Stomach clenching right along with her fists, Buffy nodded and turned back, determined. And did not say anything, because the look in his eye said that he would not accept anything like an apology. Not here, not now. 

It was too long ago, too far in the past. Another life. 

That was just Spike. Sometimes he was way too damned good at making a point that stuck.

“To be fair,” he told her very quietly, “some of ‘em will give us a reason. Some are still gonna be gits. Fair lot of demons are; or can’t forgive us any more than we them for beatin’ ‘em.” His eyes riveted themselves on hers, darker now, and serious. “I know if I’d’ve gotten loose, early on, I’d’ve done for all of you on my way out.”

He was trying to absolve her. Remind her that, at least in the beginning, he’d still been an unrepentant killer. “Would you really, though?” she asked softly. “Without the chip, would you have slaughtered everyone on your way out the door?”

His eyes on hers were still, dark pools as he cast his mind back to who he had been. “Well. Maybe not Red. Maybe. Might’ve wanted a bit of a taste, though. She _was_ adorable.” A pause. “Probably not you. Too much fun, fighting you every week.” A faint smile touched his lips then. “Maybe Rupert. Ruddy boring, that one.”

She rolled her eyes at him.

“Definitely Harris.”

/Oh, for God’s sake, when are you and Xander ever going to grow out of this stupid crap?/ It was like watching preschoolers have a slapping fight. “I honestly don’t know what’s worse; you and Xander, or you and Angel. You wouldn’t think I was watching grown men, the way you all tiff like little kids in a schoolyard.”

“Yeah, well. It’s manly tiffing, though.”

“Uhuh.” He was grinning at her, the jerk… And just like that, they were back on an even keel. By talking about which of her friends he would have killed once, back in the day.

God, this dimension was bizarre.

***

**S:**  
  
It was honestly fun just to needle her. Watch her get all brassed off at him before she realized he was doing it solely to enjoy the effect before she settled down for simple, tolerant amusement, and Christ, who had they become in this dimension, that instead of clubbing him on the beak for even hinting that he might once have liked to bite her bitty friends, she instead seemed grateful as he was for the relief of a bit of verbal repartee?

Well. Time to be back to the business at hand, though; first order of which was clearly meant to be that they locate Burge’s headquarters. After all, the largest monster’s nest would likely be the closest to their location. Of course, easier said than done, since Downtown was replete with fancy hotels and god alone knew how many vast complexes as would fit the bill. LA had been known, after all, for its endless array of tony high-rises. Who knew how many other haunts roundabout would fulfill a demon-lord’s requirements for a base of operations, a place like this? 

It was, after all, more a matter of taste than anything.

Course, Angel might have known where the thing was, but he was still well out of it, so it fell to Buffy and himself to quarter the city with the poof’s great bloody Labrador of a dragon while the other great poofter, Groo, took another tack on his wee Pegasus, seeking telltale movements or any other indication that there might be some nearby hive of activity. 

What ended up happening was they saw little to nothing on their rounds. The bleeding place had been emptied when the lot had gone to war, and all they’d left behind, no doubt, were a few guards and a whole lot of human prisoners just slowly languishing to death while they searched fruitlessly; a prospect that was rapidly, if quietly, driving his Slayer barmy. 

Damn it. Looked like they were going to have to wait for Peaches to come to before they’d be able to locate the one closest. Irony wasn’t in it.

What that left for them were Century City, who had picked up a whole load of Westwood’s leftovers, and Compton, whose center was so far from them it would take significant troop movements to get anyone into place if they had to overthrow any rearguard elements and break in. Same went with Burbank and Sherman Oaks. 

This was going to be fucking long and probably tedious goddamned undertaking. They owned all the nearby spots—Silver Lake, Beverly Hills—or had cleaned them out already—WeHo—and they were squatting in the central goddamned enchilada. Their presence was in all probability all that was keeping the dregs of the army from holing up wherever Burge had had his capitol… which was too bloody bad, since troop-movements might have given them some sodding clue which way to look. 

It was all very galling. 

Spike tried to interrogate Teeth, of course, but the quailing ex-demon lord wasn’t much help. Dug out of the hole he’d found for himself in one of the unused upper rooms of the hotel, the ex loan-shark cowered like a codfish and did his bleedin’ best to be as useless as possible. “I was never invited to anyone’s parlor, if you get what I mean.” It was disgusting the way he fawned, watching them with his good eye and half-bowing first at Spike then at Buffy. “No idea…”

Spike was not going to put up with this. For one, he didn’t have the patience. “Oi. Lorne!” And he shot his fellow demon a quick, assessing glance. “You think you could get anything if he sang?”

“Oh, please,” Lorne moaned, sounding overwhelmed at the very thought. “Blondiecakes, I’d love to help you out, but do you have any idea the headache it gives me to listen for the Powers here in this dimension? Trying to hear the messages through the Senior Partners’ static is like trying to tease a hidden message out of back-masking and white noise on a seventies record; only not Satanic…”

Spike snorted in grim amusement, and Lorne glared at him. “The migraines are _unreal_. It took me hours to recover after the last one, when your lady friend here did her little ‘Pink Panther’ ditty. And besides… I can only imagine what kind of damage a guy like this could do to even the best lounge la-da…”

“I dunno. I do a pretty mean ‘Copa Cabana’…”

“Oh, _God_, I need a Sea Breeze…”

Music Man agreed in the end, because he was a good sort. And Teeth ground out—no one could ever remotely classify that noise as ‘singing’—a few bars of the aforementioned garbage. 

Peaches would have loved it. 

Lorne, though, did not. Grabbing his horns as if they were about to fall out, Greenie stumbled to the nearest unoccupied seat, waving at the shark-like demon. “Alright, you big lug, please stop. I got what I needed. God; mean is right…” 

“No love from the peanut gallery. I put my all into that.”

“Yeah, yeah. Anyone got any water?”

Someone fetched their empath a bottle from what had been found down in the hotel storage—their entire rout had been surviving on Angel Investigations leftovers and some serious, hard-hitting looting—and handed it over. He sipped, wincing with a hand to his head. “Huh. That came in clearer than usual.” And he shot a strange look at Buffy; one that looked almost like… suspicion. 

/What the hell is that about, then?/

“I think the Powers are really appreciating these little glimpses down here. It’s amazing how much they can suss out in one quick glance, at least.”

/Okay?/

The crimson eyes shuttered, drifting away. “As you might expect, Century City’s headquartered over at the Beverly Hilton. All this time he’s only been about a mile and a half from you two.”

/Well…fuck./ Buffy’s eyes met Spike’s, startled and concerned in retrospect. 

“Burbank’s setup was at the Universal City Hilton,” Lorne went on, “hanging right over your shoulder on the edge of Griffith Park.”

/Goddamned surrounded, was what we were, in our idyllic little haven./ 

“Sherman Oaks was in the Courtyard Marriott over on Ventura Boulevard. Compton was in the Hampton in Carson, and Burge…” His face went blank. “I dunno, guys. I’m getting nothing. Or, maybe a better way to say it is ‘too much’. Like he had multiple haunts. I’m not sure, but I’m thinking maybe that rat had a lot of nests, and you’ll be spending a long time cleaning them out.”

“See, pet? Right useful, isn’t he?”

Buffy smiled in that bitty, secretive, Mona Lisa way of hers that could drive a bloke mad. “I guess I can trust you,” she allowed in Lorne’s direction.

“Delighted.” He turned back to his water, looking pained.

“Especially since you don’t seem like the type who’s going to try to spirit my little sister away to be a child bride.”

That earned her a startled look over the bottle. “Child bride deals never turn out well. Not even child groom deals; not that anyone ever mentions those. Besides. I’ve found the best way to avoid problems is you don’t take anything from _anybody_ without _enthusiastic_ consent.” Greenie winced. “Not even their peace of mind.” And he went back to snogging the plastic container more than really drinking it.

Buffy went on staring at the demon for far too long. Spike had to clear his throat to get her attention. Her head jerked around then, and she blinked at him. “Enthusiastic consent,” she repeated, lifting an eyebrow. “Huh.”

“Novel approach,” he agreed easily. “We stumbled on to it eventually.”

She rolled her eyes at him, and then her lips thinned. “Alright, so… recon? It’ll at least give us a better idea of who to hit first.”

Spike shrugged, arms crossed, and tossed a metaphorical coin. “I’m up for a reccie, though it’s probably a tossup. North or south, at this point, as every goin’ concern’s pretty far from us.” He grimaced over at their fainting friend. “Where the hell did you set up, anyway, Lorne? No hotels over there in Silver Lake.”

“Who, me?” Lorne looked up from his bottle, red-eyed and strained. He’d been rolling it back and forth across his forehead as if it would do him any good when everything in this damned place was room temperature as Spike himself was. “I took over a gorgeous villa overlooking the reservoir. Even had a flatscreen TV, not that we could use it, and the most fantastic little arbor in the back patio, though of course that died…” He winced again and readdressed the bottle. “We spread out from there. Nice place. Plenty of water.”

“That _would_ be nice.” Buffy sounded slightly miffed. “No wonder Groo looks so… clean.”

“We’ll pay their lake a visit on the way back, luv, and you can attend to your coiffure.”

That earned him another startled look. “Did you just say…”

“French is one of my languages.”

“Well I know _that_.”

From behind her, Lorne scoffed dismissively. Spike ignored the fellow to grin at her. “Don’t underestimate what a demon’ll do to earn himself some of that enthusiastic consent.”

She rolled her eyes at him again. But she didn’t turn down the option of a post-war bath-with-benefits.

***

They ended in just taking the city from north to south. It seemed the most direct approach, and as such they checked in on the ex-capitols of demonic LA in teams; Buffy and himself on the dragon coming in from the west while Connor and Groo took the eastern side on the Pegasus.

The Sherman Oaks bit of real estate looked damned deserted. Not even the benefit of a fucking sentry. Which meant one of two things, to his mind. Either that tiny yellow fiend had brought every ounce of strength he had with him to the party, dressed to impress… or he had forces at work there at his twee villa that left little to be desired. Vicious spellwork, assassin door-guards made of smoke, invisible sorcerers, some sort of languid, spell-addicted warlocks lying about ready to do them in the minute they stepped into the parlor… Sounded like the bastard’s style.

He much preferred option A.

They next overflew the Beverly Hilton, Century City’s main compound and fairly standard as Hiltons went, all up-and-down white with windows, a big circular structure in the center of the plaza that had once probably been meant to be a fountain, and a big, mostly drained pool in back that had, like theirs, long since been emptied by use. 

It too seemed largely deserted, but it did at least have a guard at the doors. One, to be exact, and that a bleeding Turkoff with a bitty pet Verulga on a chain. Not much in itself, but enough to indicate there was at the least a skeleton crew on hand. Might be a fight, might not. 

Depended on if that was it, or if there was more to the place than just a show. Best to be cautious.

Considering Century City had taken what was left of Kr’ph’s territory, they went and had a look at the ex-skeleton demon’s territory, to be safe; found the guy’s secondary palace there over there in Westwood. Might not have been where Kr’ph had had it—didn’t seem his style, somehow—but it was interesting none the less. Century City’s western base was at a place he could tell Buffy fancied more than a little. It announced itself as the Plaza La Reina (fitting, he supposed, that she’d like a place called ‘Queen’s Court’, since she was one)… and he had to admit it had a bit of charm. For a demon haunt, that was. He was known for being a bit choosy as demons went, when it came to choosing real estate, and this was rather lovely; all Spanish-style white stucco and red-tile, with courtyard fountains (if dried up), outdoor stairs, and rooftop porticos. “Want we should come back and make a reservation sometime, luv?”

“Mmm.”

He smirked. “Or we could just go to Spain sometime. Granada. I could loll about in bed and watch you sunbathe through the doors; you could bring the smell of oranges in with you when came back to me, and take me with you into the light when you let your hair fall all about me with the scent of summer…”

She heard him despite the wind of their passage, whipping about. And frowned. “Seems weird, now,” she answered back. “Thinking of you hiding from the sun.”

Huh. He hadn’t thought of that. Was she enjoying this dimension partially because she got to spend her whole day with him? Would she miss it, if they ever got back? 

He would, certainly. Getting to look at her in the light. To see it filter through her hair—even this odd, demonic light—but he wasn’t all that certain that staying here in this dimension was worth the trade, the way it seemed to be diminishing her, bit by bit. 

He wondered what he looked like, to her, in the light.

“Nothing here, really,” she commented after a mo’, and nudged the dragon into a tight spiral, heading into an updraft.

His attention recaptured, he nodded. No guards to be seen, anyway. Either Century City had recalled everyone from this burgh and sent them off with his army, or this had always been but a vacation destination for the sorcerous bastard. “Off we go, then?”

“Yeah. I want that bath.”

They’d agreed to meet Groo and Connor at the lake when the sun-moon had moved… well, it was all a matter of interpretation, here, but ‘one finger’ was the general consensus for three hours, so there it was. Ought to give those two time to get from Burbank down to Compton, make their assessment of the latter, and get back; and give Buffy and himself a time for a bit of a splash about. He had some gore to souse off as well.

And, should she prove amenable, he had a few designs on her person. But that went without saying.

It proved easy enough to locate Lorne’s reservoir. It was the only really sizable body of water nearabouts what was visible from the air, and anyway, the dragon seemed to know which way to go and to be happy to head for it. Probably the beast was thirsty, the way it streaked for it with all speed. 

Yes, it was, for it dunked its head practically under the receding surface of the lake to suck water in in great draughts as they landed and tumbled off, and why hadn’t they considered the problem of watering such a beast once they’d escaped Wolfram and Hart? What the hell had Angel been using to keep the thing fed and watered?

Well, no doubt it had been free range and done for itself before the war, like a great cat being let out at night to fend for itself, but the war and all those dragons on its turf had clearly infringed on its ability to scampler about freely, so there it was. Thing had been suffering and hadn’t been able to say much about it, and still it had flown them about like a taxicab… and now Spike felt like a tosser for abusing the animal. 

“Angel’s gonna be upset that we haven’t taken care of his dragon right,” Buffy murmured beside him, echoing his sentiments.

“Yeah, well, not like he left an instruction manual,” Spike grunted roughly, still a bit sour about it. /Groo could have mentioned it. What the hell has he been using to water _his_ beast, then?/

“Well, it’s doing okay now,” Buffy answered, and without another word, stepped down past the high-water mark and waded directly into the lake. To hell with a little wash. She was going all-in.

He watched her backstroke about for a mo’, her wet blouse clinging to her tits, and… fuck. /Time for a bathe as well, I suppose./ Might settle his overeager prick to step into the water and drown himself. Not that he could, but the chill might help a bit in the way of keeping the visit to business. 

Or would, if, of course, the water was piped down from the sodding Arctic. Which it wouldn’t be, nearly cold enough for all that. It was blistering enough in this bloody dimension that even a lake this size was trying its best to turn into a pond, if one judged by the regular tics on the dry ground round it telling the story. Used to be a good deal larger. The high-water mark was at least five, six feet above the waterline itself, same as the reservoir they’d used up above Beverly Hills. 

Hell; even _he_ was probably warm to the touch most of the time in this bloody place. Buffy must be parboiling.

He wondered what the shock of the cool water would feel like. When they’d gone to get potables—Christ, was it only nine days gone?—he’d splashed off a bit, sure, but he hadn’t gone in for full immersion. None of them had; hadn’t wanted to pollute their only source of drinking water, though he knew for a fact that it had taken discipline and a number of their folk had been sore tempted. 

Here, though… Well. What the hell. They’d be boiling it anyway, if they were to use it. 

He stepped in. And shuddered as the shock of the relative coolth washed up from his feet and ankles to perk up his entire body in waves. “Bloody…”

“Come in, Spike, the water’s fine.” And there was his Slayer, surfacing to spin with a lovely grace, long arm extended, and then turning to face him and treading water all pale under the glassy surface, like… 

Well. Where had her clothes got to, then?

He cleared his throat, abruptly much more interested in her state of undress than he was in the water temperature. After all, it rather seemed to indicate… “Might turn into a lolly.” Which would interfere with matters, as he had previously hoped; but he rather thought not for long. Especially if…

She shot him a daring sort of smile. “I’ll lick you.”

Well, then. Put matters into perspective, didn’t it. 

To hell with shifting temperatures. He bravely stepped in up to his shins. “Using this as a combination bath and laundry, is it?”

“Mm.” She did another lazy spin that made her gorgeous tits bob round her, just below the surface, and despite all that curiosity got the best of him. 

“Where the hell did your clothes go, Slayer?”

She just smiled. “What can I say? I’m talented.”

/Mystery, thy name is woman./ “You are at that.” /Christ, I love you./ That she could be so inviting to one such as he… Clearly she considered that they had little time to spare before their friends arrived, and intended to make the most of it. She wasn’t in the least shy about it, and he was really being quite the cad to make her wait, so he waded manfully in. And, well, it wasn’t all that chilly, once one got over the shock of it. It was, in fact, rather nice to feel that sort of shock at all, considering most of his unlife had been spent experiencing this sort of thing as a nil alteration. Vampires had no need to maintain homeostasis; but with the ambient temperature of this sodding dimension hovering at about a hundred and bloody ten or whatever the hell, water like this, once you got below the tepid surface, was like stepping into a shocking sixty degree ice floe.

Christ, it was lovely.

For all that, he didn’t even wilt all that much, though it must be said he was aided in the endeavor to stay at full attention by the way Buffy’s seafoam gaze remained on him with that smug, proprietary glint in them that made a man feel damned grateful to be owned and wanted. “Like what you see, is it?”

Time was she would have said something dismissive, even cutting or rude, but now she just smiled full into his eyes. “You’re beautiful in the sunlight, William.”

Fair put a lump in his throat, sometimes, hearing her say things like that. Calling him beautiful. Almost didn’t know what to do with it, save to turn the accolade around. “You’re a fair treat yourself, Love, with your skin glimmering like diamonds, all covered in water…”

“Shh.” She moved closer, caught his shoulders and slid up against him. “I wasn’t fishing for compliments. I meant it. I love to look at you in the light.” A touch of sadness veiled her gorgeous eyes briefly, turning Aphrodite’s apples to a troubled hazel. “I’m really going to miss it, if we ever get out of here.”

He caught her chin, lifted it, extraordinarily moved… and wholly reft of words. And because he no longer knew how to do anything else, he kissed her. 

Sometimes this dimension truly was like something in a dream, and more like heaven than it had any right to be. Time, for one, moved insanely slowly here, and gave them endless opportunity, it seemed, for moments like these. No interruptions beckoned in a place that had once housed millions, as he skimmed down along her neck, her throat, over the scar that was his mark and felt her buck slightly against him in reply—Fuck, he loved that! It would never get old—down over the upper slopes of her breasts… “I can go down on you underwater, you know. Don’t need to breathe.” It sounded like a torturous enterprise considering he’d not taste or smell her, but also a fascinating one; holding her captive, unable to do anything but sit on his shoulders and fight for breath above the surface while he had his way with her. Worth the minor discomfort of being under the water that long, certainly, to feel her squirming about on him. He could already damn near feel it; her heating the water to boiling about his face till he _could_ taste her, and then...

Her head had fallen back while he worked, and now it snapped up, her eyes coming to meet his in clear amazement. “That sounds…” A delightful shiver worked its way up her body, and her heart tittered a little at the very thought. Then it settled back to its normal beat, and she frowned. “I’d probably drown. And you wouldn’t enjoy it as much as you usually do.” 

He lifted a brow with interest. “Oh? More than one way to enjoy you, pet.”

She gave it due consideration, then shook her head solemnly. “Rain check. Maybe when we don’t have a standing date with someone in a few minutes, and I can really focus. And I have something to hold onto.”

He found himself mildly disappointed, but slipped his hand down instead. “So… what do you want instead, my goldilocks?” And, brushing over said locks, darker and curled beneath the water, touched her, very lightly, with his index finger. Christ, she was bloody hot for him. And slick, despite the water all round. Ready, just from the talking. 

Fuck, she could make a man swell just from this, and he crowded close like a randy stripling or a fledge, tasting of her neck again, because Christ, the way her mouth always fell open when he did that, the way she breathed like he was stealing all the oxygen from her…

Sodding fucking Christ, when had he gotten so bleeding lucky?

“Just… want you… Just do that, please…” She was already going incoherent. And, when she sounded like that, it tended to bring out the animal in him. 

He loosed the chain. Couldn’t help it. Growled. “Do you any way you like, Slayer. Fuck…” He was rutting against her already as he worked, and alright. One shag and a bit long after the battle had been over, and they’d be heading into others, and clearly the both of them were feeling it, somewhere back of the mind where it was all instinct; some place that said they should get off, and quick, while they still had time to manage it. Too many battles, and not enough loving to remind them they were alive.

/Or, well… Alive enough, anyway./ Made the same difference, in the end. Christ, he felt alive when he was touching her, when he had his mouth on her, when he was inside her. Like all the life that made her coursed through him as well, invigorating all his limbs and fair _roaring_ through him; same as if he’d taken blood. Headiest drug ever to come on the market, being in her arms with his prick buried inside her, bellowing her name while she screamed his and her nails dug into his back, and god knew he’d trade it for every chance he might ever have again to take throats behind seedy bars or under bridges in any city in the world. Because this, dancing in her fire and her light?

This was a fucking _sacrament_.

Once, it had burned him same as lying on that cross, to take it. Still, he had done it, and willing. Now, it never even burned. Now… it was clean. “Buffy, God, you…”

“Don’t stop. Inside me, and don’t stop…”

“Christ, yes…”

Now, when he found her, and she surged up to meet him, she could open her eyes, and look upon him… and her gaze on his did not flay or mortify, but gave of him surcease. And he could rest.

He could rest, now.

***

“So… How do you work, anyway?”

Just the tips of her fingers, sliding up along his arms; ticklish, but bearable. “Hm?” 

The sun-moon was baking his back dry, and making him oddly two-temperatured. Cool beneath, where he lay in shadows, lake-damp and only half on her. Hot again, beneath that bleeding, unending sun. Her nails trailed up his naked back; down over the slope of his arse. Tickled in the cleft. Back up again; enjoying him.

Maybe Muscles and Junior would get eaten by something and never show. “Your… you know.” When he lifted a bit to glance down at her, he was startled and frankly amused to see her blushing like a bloody schoolgirl. “Anatomy. The ‘Vampyre’ book never did cover that part. Which I thought was honestly kind of a let-down, considering that was the part I needed to know about, since…”

He lifted a brow. “Since you made it a bit of a habit to shag vamps, is it?”

“Well…” She _humphed_ at him, wriggled a little in a useless attempt to escape, clearly embarrassed now. Delighted, he refused to allow her to make any kind of getaway. For one, he was her sun-shade at mo’. “Shut up. It was research, and Giles was really happy I seemed interested in my ‘studies’…”

“Oho! Teacher’s pet all the sudden, ‘cept he had no idea why the twee Slayer out of nowhere wanted to know how vamp biology functioned…”

“Look!” she snapped, glaring into his eyes. “I barely got an education about _human_ guys in health class. All this garbage about rolling condoms onto bananas, and clinical stuff that basically put us all to sleep. It sure didn’t teach us anything about how bodies actually _worked_…”

“‘Specially your own, I’ll wager, eh pet?” he hazarded, eyes sliding up and down her lovely form. “Focused more on how the lads worked, was it?”

She blinked, arrested. “How’d you know?”

“Scientific texts tend to be written mostly by blokes. And for better or worse, men tend to be obsessed with our own anatomy…” He let his own disgust show through. “And to be a deal less interested in the workings of the fairer sex. Which is a great loss, considering that how you tick, luv, is by far the more interesting phenomenon.”

She watched him warily. “When did you become such a connoisseur, anyway?”

He grinned broadly. “Put a proper Victorian lad face-first into a lovely bit of quim and watch all his resolve fade away.” He blew air between pinched fingers, opened them as if to let a bit of dandelion fluff dissipate into the ethers. “Poof. A lifetime’s repression, vanished in an instant.”

Her brows rose. “So, what? You went to a prostitute or something?”

The grin widened. “A’ course not. That would be too brief an education. Angelus took me to a proper brothel. Which was everything I was against, when I was a human…” he admitted with a slight frown, and shrugged.

Buffy looked startled. “If it was everything you were against…”

He avoided her eyes. “Part of my ‘training’, wasn’t it?” he managed briskly enough, to cover the still-extant echoes of old self-disgust and unbridled glee. “He knew Dru and I…” Well, he wasn’t about to open that can of worms. “That things between us weren’t exactly settled, and that I didn’t really know which way was up when it came to shaggin’. Not really; not yet.” And that was as close as he was going to get to laying it all out clear before her. Sure as shite didn’t look at her. “He…”

“Because Dru was your first?” She didn’t sound surprised, so it seemed he’d given that much away before now. 

/Oh, hell./ “In a manner of speaking. But…” He shook his head. “Can we leave it at my first time was as much a disaster as yours, Buffy? Possibly moreso, an’…”

“Okay, now that’s worth talking about.” Buffy pushed herself up on her elbow, clearly captivated by the idea of sharing stories of terrible deflowerings. 

“Oh, bloody hell…” He might as well just stake himself right here. “Sure you wouldn’t rather hear about me killing babies, or…”

She actually rolled her eyes at him. “Oh for God’s sake. How bad could it have been?”

/Christ./ She might just sodding laugh. 

“Spike.” Her hand cupped his upper arm. “You know everything about me. How do you think that makes _me_ feel?”

Well… fuck. “Came up out of my soddin’ grave,” he blurted. “Roaring with life. Newborn and ready to tear the world in two. She was waiting. Fed me. So then I was high on the blood…”

For a wonder, Buffy didn’t look away, even at the stark picture he presented. 

Course, here was where it went from gruesome to embarrassing as fuck. “Then she took me to her, and…” He halted. Hell. “Can we just say I’ve gotten better over the years, and leave it at that, Slayer?”

A warm hand moved up and down his arm; gentle, slow strokes. Soothing, even. “Spike.”

/Fucksake./ “I didn’t know what the bloody fuck I was doing, alright, Buffy? I didn’t even know how to do it. And you have no sodding clue how many underclothes and things were in the way back then. And I…” Vampires could blush, given enough cause. “She was… understanding. Very kind about it. Told me there was plenty of time…”

“Oh.” 

He couldn’t bear it if Buffy laughed. Had to push on without looking at her face. “Any road, I tried again a bit later, with her yammering about soddin’ Cassiopeia lookin’ down on us, and Medusa being our guide or some such nonsense, but at least I managed that time. She was right forgiving, and I felt a proper man. Then everything turned into some sodding dissertation about knights and faeries, and how I had to meet the family, and so of course I got all excited about courtly love and family and having given myself to her and all that rot, so I dragged her off to meet my mum. Wanted to introduce her…” He shook his head. “After that, lost the mood for a bit…”

“That… makes sense.”

She didn’t sound like she was laughing, at least. But then she knew that part of the story right enough. “Then we ran into ‘Daddy’ and the old bent bitch, and Angelus decided to take me in hand. And before we had the chance to give it another go…” He shook his head grimly, still avoiding Buffy’s eye. “He went from shagging her in front of me to show me there was no such thing as love, to taking me off to the brothel like some sort of big brother, ‘so I could please her better’; along with what I told you with getting me in my cups, an’ all the rest. An’ since I was beyond hurt that she’d go to him before giving me another chance to show her I could do right by her…” He managed a shrug. “Got enough of an eyeful then to know what I hadn’t done, so I knew how inadequate I’d been as well.”

He heard Buffy’s wince at that, heard the reflected regret in her voice. “Okay, but you had to start somewhere. You’re practically a sex god by this point, but you had to learn it from somewhere, right?”

/Oh, bloody hell./ Now she was trying to talk him up, to make him feel better. “Thought you said I wasn’t as good as I thought, and I shouldn’t get a big head. ‘Like you’re God’s gift’, as I recall…” And here he’d gone and met her gaze, like a fool.

To his surprise, Buffy merely rolled her eyes at him yet again, expression full of love and understanding, but no mocking whatsoever. “Well, I can’t speak for how you are with anyone else, but you’ve been a gift for me.”

/Oh, Christ./ Closing his eyes, he turned, buried his face in her neck. “Sodding hell, Buffy.”

“Something to be said for modern-day awareness, huh? At least we all know tab A goes into slot B, shake vigorously; and the clothes are mostly easier…”

Christ; sometimes her pithy remarks could wreck him when nothing else would. He dissolved in spite of himself, shoulders shaking. “Helpful indeed, I’m sure, pet. Since I thought it was the height of bad taste to read any of the perfectly available pornographic material that was floating about even then…”

Her head jerked up away from him. “They had _porn_ back then?” she demanded incredulously.

“Buffy, they had porn in Ancient China. They had sodding porn on cave walls before there was writing. Admittedly, the stuff they printed in my day was probably the worst sort of trash, but the men read it avidly—and the women in secret, because it was in terrible taste for them to know a single sodding thing about how sex worked, but of course they all wanted to know, and bless them for it—and the unmentionable print business did a roaring trade.”

“Well… wow.”

“Only proper on the surface, Victorians. Scrape off the prude, and everyone just wanted to get shagged. Or were being shagged already and just didn’t noise about it. Only I was too much of a nancy snob to admit it, so I didn’t touch the stuff.” He let his own self-disgust color his tones. “How dare I, because then I’d want to abuse myself, thinking of it…”

Buffy covered her mouth with her hand, staring at him with dancing eyes. “You didn’t…”

He let her see the irony. “Woke myself up a few times wanking, sure, but makin’ the conscious decision to do it? Wouldn’t be gentlemanly, yeah?”

“Oh my God, how did you get to be _you?”_

“Demon.”

“Well, thank God.”

He snorted at that. “I told you the sod set me free.” He shrugged a little, letting his hands flop. “I was a poncy fool, like I said. Probably a good thing Angelus took me in hand, for all of that, even if the reason he did it wasn’t to make a man of me. He went easy on me at first, but he was bound and determined to teach me that love was a lie and all that rot.” 

Buffy frowned. “And he did that by screwing Drusilla in front of you and then dragging you to a brothel and forcing you to have sex with a bunch of other chicks?”

/Went all in to wreck my every romantic notion, yeah./ Spike let out a hiss of a breath. “Resisted hard as I could, but he got my blood pumping. Fledges are right predictable. Knew what guilt would do to me, to my supposed relationship with Dru; at least from my perspective. So he got me to break. I was right ashamed in the morning, of course, felt I’d betrayed her, even with knowing all they got up to. But till then…” He shrugged it off, with an effort. “Was an education, for all that. Once I finally broke, we caroused all night and then…” He halted abruptly. The end of the story had once been something of a fond memory, but it wasn’t all that amusing according to his current perspective.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What? You ate the ladies and then you ate the ladies?”

“Well…”

She sighed heavily. “Fledges.”

Change of subject was in order, he thought. Relieve the tension that had sprung up. “I don’t know how, for all that.”

“Hm?”

“How I work. Glad I do, or unlife would be a deal less fun. Bloody bore, yeah, living this long without sex…” He tried waggling his brows at her, got about two-thirds of a smile, if a reserved one. “But… I’m not sure.” He shrugged. “Since it all goes better after a feed, I imagine it has something to do with the borrowed blood, and the potency of it. It all heads in the direction of greatest stimulation. Only get a cockstand when feeding when you’re a fledge—and I imagine it goes about the same for the ladies—as you don’t care about much else for the first year or two. Not even sex. All you want is blood and violence, and any sex you have is a bit secondary. Sort of an afterthought, or a way to spend the energy, yeah?” 

He saw the recognition in her eyes. /Yeah, a bit like you after the slaying, Love, not to put too fine a point on it./ “You’re just basically a permanent bloody hardon for that whole first year or so… and then you just want the rush to keep on, after it starts to fade. So you look for bigger and better things to push it. ‘S when the sex starts coming back in as its own thing again; but by then it’s become all wrapped up with the rest.” He made a slightly self-denigrating face. “‘Member what I said? I followed my blood, which…”

“‘Doesn’t exactly flow in the direction of your head’?” she quoted him, and she had recovered enough to smile in full, recalling. 

“The big one, anyway,” he agreed easily. “But, that’s why gettin’ in a good fight’ll do as much as anything; or gettin’ a dose of hot wax, or bein’ hung from shackles. Whatever. Anything as gets the adrenaline pumping. Reason why vamps tend to have…” He winced, as it skirted some things that were like to always be somewhat of a tender area. “A bit of an issue with conflating sex and violence. Why a good fight is foreplay. Gets the blood moving, yeah?”

He thought she was disgusted when she pushed him off, till, when he rolled, obliging and regretful, she merely went with him to lie on top and propped herself on her elbows. “So what’s my excuse?”

The old echo caught him up for a moment, so that it took him a bit to catch on. /Oh./ “Slayer instincts got your wires crossed?”

“Mmm…” She dropped her head to the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Drifted up along his neck, opposite his siring mark. And bit him. Hard. 

Stunned, he arched under her in amazement, all the blood in him shooting north to explode into that locus with alarming speed. “Bloody fuck!” If she knew how close this was to one of his more unlikely fantasies she’d stop immediately, so he kept his sodding mouth shut and just writhed while she held him there, moaning and captive, with incredible suction, making him squirm beneath her with increasing desperation. /Oh fucking, bloody, christing…/ Then, with a scrape of her teeth and an abrupt pop, she released him. Prodded, admiring her work, while he shuddered, incapable of thought or breath or sound. Grinned… and leaned away a little to watch his body.

The instant she let go, stopped poking at the spot, all his blood headed immediately south once more to explode into his cock, making his reanimated stiffy crash into her hip at ramming speed. “Jesus fuck, Slayer!” He might unman himself if he let her know…

“I think I’m going to like playing with this,” she informed him, sounding deeply satisfied.

/Oh, _shit_. Oh, bloody, bloody hell…/ He had thought she had abused him in lovely ways in their first months together. Fuck. She could keep him on edge for _hours_, now she knew this bitty secret. Fucking _days_. “You’re a hard woman,” he managed, and fought to keep the tremble from his voice. She could never know how close she’d come to what he wanted most, or she’d never do it again, and god knew he’d take the facsimile any day over nothing.

She said nothing. Merely smiled smugly. He thought he ought to be frightened. “You want to hear something ironic?” he whispered finally, throat hoarse. 

“Mm?” She was poking about his body now, as if looking for new places to nibble at. He needed to head her off before they ended up here all day, and him twisting like a worm on a hook and begging for it like a pre-teen. Couldn’t have her bringing him off with just her mouth in places that had nothing to do with his cock. 

He had his reputation to keep, after all. “When I first came to dear old Sunnyhell, met up with the Annoying One…”

Interrupted in her hunt for tender places, she met his eyes in clear confusion. “The who?”

“Anointed. Little git who hung about making an irritant of himself after you dusted the Master of the bloody Universe?”

Her lovely face darkened. “Oh yeah. Him.”

“Ever tell you I hung him up in a cage in the sun?”

She sat back a little in surprise, gratefully distracted. “Is that how you ended up in charge?”

He grinned proudly. “Shocked everyone, didn’t I? I was a right bastard, back then, but it got the whole nest’s attention.”

She smiled proudly at him. “You always did know how to make an entrance.”

“Oh,” he told her, grin widening, “that wasn’t my entrance, luv. That was what I was about to tell you.” He drew a finger down her shoulder, her upper arm. God, how she gleamed in the rich, sunset colors of this day; like a painting by Caravaggio or Botticelli. She glowed from within. “I told them…” It was just too hilarious. “I’d do their Slayer for them…”

He was cut off, eyes jerked up from his contemplation of her flesh, when he heard it. 

She giggled. She actually giggled. She stopped herself immediately, clapping her free hand over her mouth, but her eyes were dancing. Finally she gave it up and flopped down on the hard-baked verge, laughing hard; and he couldn’t help it, had to lie down and have a laugh beside her. Stomach a bit the weaker for it but heart the fonder, to lie there and listen to the music that was Buffy Summers, actually _laughing_. Time was he never got to see her happy. Certainly not around him. /Christ, Love, you _glow_./

“You…” She was still sputtering beside him. “Remember when I… asked you to tell me how you… did it?” She was having a hard time getting words out through her mirth.

“What’s that, pet?” he asked, confused and still chortling a bit. 

“How you got them. The other two. You told me…” She went off again, laughing in gales, so that he had to prop himself up to stare at her, wondering just what the bloody fuck had her in hysterics now. “Oh God…”

Her face was scarlet and all, and now he was starting to get concerned. “You alright, Buffy?”

She had one finger up to signal a halt, managed to gasp some breath back into her lungs. “You said…” _Giggle_. “Sooner or later…” _Gasp_. “I was going to want it…” She dissolved again, and he was just now starting to pick up where she was going. 

His grin started to creep back, because, /Oh Christ./

She was pointing at him now, accusingly, though red-faced and with tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “You said… the second that happened you’d… be there… You’d…” Her face twisted in an effort to keep from going off again. “You’d _slip_ in…” She lost it once more. Was back on the ground, laughing like a damned madwoman, but alright, she had a point. When you looked at it that way it really did seem like a terrible pun, given current circumstances. But he’d managed to leave off chuckling at this point, could only watch her with awe. 

“And have myself a real good day,” he finished, and reached out to brush the hair from her laugh-reddened cheek with his fingertips. /Who knew you could have so many? So many the better than just the one, by watching her _live?/_

/And loving her./ 

She turned her head to meet his eyes, sobered a little, if still gasping a bit. “Are you? Is it better?”

/Than if I’d killed you, and never had to change?/ “How can you ask me that, Buffy?” he demanded softly. “Wouldn’t trade a second to say I had a third. Didn’t know, did I, how wrong I was back then; and how right. Didn’t know you’d be so bleedin’ hard to kill… or that I’d wind up wantin’ you far more in my bed than in my blood. And _this?_ Christ.” 

He watched her as she turned away to stare up at the strange, salmon sky, saw the smile there, still curving her lips. “You got that, too,” she whispered. 

Yeah. He had. Looking back on who he had been when he’d said it, as compared to now?

He’d thought he was happy, then; swaggering into town with Dru on his arm, ready to get his girl set right, take on his third Slayer, make a nest and a name as the greatest ever to touch unlife. A Master vamp on top of the world. 

Instead Sunnydale had taken him apart and put him back together as wrong as any vampire had ever been. And as right. He had never known unhappiness like he’d known there. 

And he had never known happiness, nor rightness, like he had found in the crucible that was Sunnydale, and Summers, and light that burned. Alpha and Omega and all the rest, right here, lying in his arms... “Wouldn’t trade a day of it. Or a night.”

Her hand folded in his, small, warm, powerful fingers threading through. Like life. “No,” she whispered. “Worth it.”

“Yeah.”

***  
  
  
  
  
TBC, with BuffyPOV.   
And, you know, they'll get back to work and stuff. But I'm a big fan of romantic interludes, so... whatever.  
  



	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Ok, THIRD and last post for today, to catch us all up.** Some hard stuff here, for them both. Now that Buffy is feeling again, she gets ALL of the big emotions, the full spectrum. And that is... living.
> 
> And Spike... he's full demon when he's in battles... but once he's out of them, he's still got that pesky soul floating around to make him think and feel things he never would have before. So... stuff, as we deal with the fallout from war.
> 
> Skirmish skirmish skirmish...  
But first, let us begin with the BuffyPOV from where we left off:

**B:**

Looking idly at the sky, watching for their friends to come back, her hand entwined in Spike's relatively cool one to keep the heat at bay, Buffy almost felt like she was sunbathing on some beach with him after a swim. It felt so good to have this with her vampire. 

God, her stomach-muscles were sore from laughing. And her heart was full. 

He’d made her giggle. In the middle of a _war_. 

It had taken her a few minutes reflection to recognize the emotion she was feeling. Had been feeling, more and more often lately, with him.

She was happy.

_Happy_. God; it had been so long since she had felt this way for so many weeks at a stretch without it slipping that she was almost afraid of it. Terrified of it moving, getting away, and she surged up to stare at him with an intensity that she knew by his expression worried him. “You can’t go anywhere.”

“You know I won’t. Already said it.” His hand lifted, cupped her cheek. “What’s wrong, pet?”

“That’s the problem. It’s right. And I’m afraid. Of losing it. I haven’t…” She ducked her head.

“Buffy?”

If she admitted it, would she scare it off? “I’m so scared. Because I’m _happy_. And I haven’t felt like this since…” She shook her head. “I can’t remember, and if you…”

She _oofed_ when he crushed her abruptly to his chest. “Oh, Christ, Love…” She was surprised to realize that it wasn’t her, but him, who was shaking. His arms, his body. “Oh, God, Buffy… Are you saying that being with me has made you…”

“Happy,” she whispered it into the sun-warmed skin beneath her lips, and now she was shaking too. “I don’t even know what to do with it. I used to hit you and run away screaming whenever I even got close to feeling happy with you, even for a second. Or understanding that… you just wanted to love me. Because I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t know what to do with a love that I wanted without…”

“Resenting it?” He stroked her hair lightly. “Never wanted to control you, pet.”

“That scares me.” Love without fences. Without boundaries…

His hand scrolled down her hair, a soothing, repeated pressure. “The thing about me that scared you from the start is, you wanted me but you knew I was never in line to be a daddy-figure, yeah?”

She remembered his idiotic comment about her ex-Watcher, right before they’d gotten involved, glared at the flesh below her face. /Alright, captain psychologist. You don’t see me trying to date Giles, do you?/ And exhaled dismissively into his chest. “You can’t even tie your shoes.” Literally. Boots. Always untied.

He sounded entirely unperturbed as he spoke into the sky. “Just want to love you,” he repeated the words back to her. “Be there. Be whatever you need me to be.” 

It relaxed her because she knew it was true. He had ever been only what she needed. Terrifyingly so. And that had been all that she had ever wanted; from Angel, from Riley… and all that they had not been able to give, because they had been too busy telling her what she needed and being heroes to support her when she had needed them to just _be_ there. 

Spike had never needed the limelight. Except the one time he had thought he needed to kill himself to make himself ‘worthy’ for her. The one egregious time he had gone and died and left her because the thought he wasn’t enough, and had just been done trying to be. The death he might not even have sought if she hadn’t told him he _wasn’t_ worthy for years, and then confirmed it by turning around and kissing Angel right in front of him on the very eve they had finally started getting things figured out between them; and god, what if he hadn’t left her? What if… “What I don’t need from you,” she whispered, very very quietly, “is for you to _prove_ anything. Ever again. You’re perfect for me just the way you are, okay? I need you just like this. So please. Don’t try that crap. Ever again.”

His hands shook as he lifted them back to her hair. “Already told you. Not going anywhere, Buffy. If I can make you happy, make you smile, make you laugh; bloody hell. Make you glow?" She knew that emotion in his eyes. He was near tears at the very thought. "…Then that makes me hero enough for any storybook.” He lifted her then and smiled in a kind of tremulous, amazed triumph, looked her over as if she were new and wondrous. “It means I can turn the sun on.”

She smiled back, through grateful tears. And thought… maybe this was joy? Relief? “That’s your superpower. And you don’t need to wear anything to do it.” And then her eyes traveled pointedly up and down his body. “Most of the time, it works better when you don’t.” 

Answering his now-lascivious grin, she lowered herself to kiss him lightly on the lips.

***

**S:**  
  
“So, sounds like we hit Century City and Sherman Oaks first,” Connor summarized. “Maybe bring a few of those spell-bombs of Dad’s in case something comes up in the magicks department…”

“If we’re all agreed that we save the tougher targets for last, anyway.” Spike’s gaze touched on Buffy’s, then Groo’s. They nodded solemnly, though His Poofyness seemed mildly disappointed at the lack of immediate violence. 

“By the time we get through with them, do you think you can have enough people in position to hit Burbank?” Buffy’s query, though meant for the lad, was made with one eye to Lorne, who would remain in the Hyperion holding down the fort with a skeleton crew. Not a pleasant idea, certainly.

“I think we can make it,” Connor answered, shrugging nonchalantly. “If we travel light, grab water on the way up from Silver Lake. We can camp at Griffith Park. It’s a nice nomansland.”

“You might even find shade there,” Lorne agreed, and nodded slightly at Buffy. “I’ll be fine down here. Used to hang in all the time by myself with this little guy while Team Angel went out to paint the town…”

Connor looked slightly nonplussed. “What, were you my babysitter or something?”

“Oh, yeah, honeycakes. Your dad and Cordelia, Fred, Gunn, Wes; they’d all head out to hit the ballet or something, and I’d snuggle up with you and sing you to sleep. We’d have a blast…” Though the words came out light, there was a faintly audible sour note beneath them, audible to the trained ear.

Interestingly, the cub seemed to twig onto it. Any road, he narrowed his eyes at Greenie as if he'd smelled a rat. “Why didn’t they leave someone else with me and invite you? Weren’t you part of the team?”

Lorne frowned, saturnine features deepening. “Well… not yet, kid. Only sort of a satellite member by then. Hanging on from the sidelines. My club got trashed for the second time; kind of collateral damage from some Angel Investigations hijinks, so I was staying here rent-free. Couldn’t contribute a lot from a sword-swinging perspective, but I could translate a few demon-negotiations and babysit…”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“I didn’t mind.”

Spike kind of thought he had. And it sounded like Angel, honestly, to not notice when he was using people without thinking about it. But hey. It hadn’t been _his_ team. “So, then; question is, who do we want to hit first? The one that looks softest but probably isn’t, or the one that’s probably full of mages and get it over with before we head into a smackdown with the plain bullyboys?”

***

**B:**  
  
To use Spike’s terminology, they ‘did for’ Century City first under the assumption that, having had a mage as DL, he would have stuck with pure muscle for his retinue and there’d be fewer surprises. Which turned out to be more or less correct, and really, they got off mostly without a scratch. Which was a good thing, considering their ‘invasion force’ consisted of everyone they could pack onto two flying monsters; that was, herself and Spike, an enthusiastic Groo, a knuckle-cracking, raring-for-trouble Gwen, a relatively placid Nina, and an anxious-seeming, chain-smoking Maria as backup. 

Buffy had to give Maria credit. She looked like a stiff breeze could blow her down, but those spider-legs for damn sure came in super handy in a fight. The tiny brunette took care of one of the hulking Turkoff guards all on her own, and then held down the Vurulga in a kind of eight-legged half-nelson until Spike got there to put it out of its misery with a sword, basically getting them all in the door while the rest of them were busy fighting off the other Turkoff. Which was, you know… Alright.   
  
Actually, Buffy would kind of be okay going into battle with that girl any day, when you got down to it. Talent was talent. For realsies; Turkoff were mean bastards, what with the spines, and the fur, and the spit... /And let’s not forget the slime. Never forget the slime./ Why had she had her bath _before_ the fight, again?

They had to fight three other guards after that to get to the basement of the hotel, but that was it. Nothing else lived there anymore, amazingly. And once they got there, they were able to open the doors of a bunch of storage rooms, and release what turned out to be a really, really depressing bunch of half-dead people who were, some of them, barely alive. 

Okay, some of them hadn’t made it. And some of them wouldn’t. And dammit, this was going to be hard. They’d just… died of thirst, most of them. Or of wounds left unattended, or hunger, or…

/We should’ve come sooner. Found them earlier, somehow. Forced Bro’os to do his thing faster, or…/

She could feel Spike watching her, knew he knew what she was thinking. Bit it back, forced herself to do the work. Sort the living, the dead, do triage with the girls. To trudge back down to half-carry the next victim up into the light for the water that had been hoarded away from them; for assessment, for the help that might be too late. But inside she was already cursing herself for having been _asshole_ enough to have felt joy, earlier. For having been contented, even if it was only for ten minutes. Why should she be permitted to feel happy—so damned _happy_—when there were people suffering in the world, and it was her _job_ to…

Out of nowhere, Spike was there, yanking her to the side by one arm. “Fucking _stop._”

She found herself staring at him in shock, jerked out of her roiling thoughts by the his harsh, snarling tones. He was practically livid in the low light; glowing with it. "Wh..."   
  
“A few minutes, a few hours wouldn’t have changed this. This wasn’t your bloody fault, and you’re fucking _allowed_ to have a good day, to have a goddamned _life_, without it tipping the sodding scales! Do you hear me, Buffy?”

He knew her too damned well. “What if…” She started, because the guilt. It overwhelmed. 

“If you make me take a bloody shot at you again, after all this time, I’m going to be furious with you. I’ll do it though. Knock you about you till you see reason, you infuriating bint.”

That got her glaring. /Oh, fuck you./ “I’ll hit you back. And I really don’t want to.”

His eyes kindled. “Go on then. Fight, if it’ll bring you back to life. Christ; anything but this.” 

She quivered, on the knife edge. And then deflated, because… /No./ “No… I don’t want us to be… that anymore. It’s not your fault. It’s…”

“Not bloody _yours_, either.”

Her eyes jerked back to his. “Isn’t it?”

_“No,” _he insisted. “It’s not. Not everything is your goddamned responsibility, alright?” He ran his hand through his hair, clearly at his wits end. “Christ, if I thought I was going to bed with fucking _Angel_, I…”

That got her in the gut. _“Excuse_ me?”

He waved his hand around the dim hall and then caught her shoulder again to bracket her, got right in her face. “You’re not the goddamned savior of the world. Or at least, not every day. Yeah, sometimes you happen to pull it off because you’re fucking brilliant; but it doesn’t mean that every single life that exists in it is your responsibility to save, every second. And you don’t have a whole bloody universe of guilt to atone for, so stop walking around carrying it like that ponce. You’re better than that. Living like that’s not living; it’s dying slow.” He shook his head and put her away from him. “Hell, no wonder you’ve been so bleedin’ sad, Buffy.” And he traced her cheek with the backs of his fingers while she stared. “Thinkin’ of nothing but the dead, who were maybe meant to be, you don’t know; and never the ones you save.” And he smiled a little; a bright star in the dark. “See what you are, Love," he urged, fervent in the gloom. "See that you save them. Don’t see only the ones who are lost, or you’ll go mad.”

She looked down and away. “I’ve spent my life being told they’re all mine, though.”

It made his mouth twist in clear disdain. “Fuck of a lot to put on someone so young, I reckon. And they wonder so many Slayers have a death wish by the time they’re eighteen, and fuck-all to look forward to. They surround ‘em with corpses at night and failure in the day, instead of lettin’ ‘em see all the good they do. Just a bunch of bloody chantin’ in your ears about how you’re never good enough, is it?” He straightened, abruptly full of resolve. “If it’s too much, to see this, I can do it, pet.”

That jerked her back to the present. “Are you really going to tell me I shouldn’t help with the cleanup? Because I’m going to know anyway.”

He eyed her for a moment, then slouched a little in defeat. “You know I’d never tell you what to do either way. And I know you’re strong enough for anything. Just… don’t let it destroy you, yeah?” He tried a small smile that did nothing to hide that he, too had insecurities. “Found I might need you a bit, too.”

That brought the smile back to her face in answer. “I know.” And she pulled in a breath, refocused for the moment. /See? This is why I need you. You’re my counterpoint./ “Alright.”

“Alright?”

“Yeah.”

They headed back into the darkness.

***

And did it again. And again. At Century’s Westwood complex, which only held a few scared human slaves, not under guard at all and consequently in a lot better shape than the poor souls he’d had locked away in his main complex. At Sherman Oaks; where the spellcasters and sorcerers gave them a run for their money but were stymied by Betta George, who had taken it into his head to float along behind to join them, and the remainder of the spellbombs Angel had had them carry out of Wolfram and Hart during their retreat. They’d split the stuff three ways: Connor and Co carrying one third up toward Burbank, they the other, and the rest back with Lorne as a rearguard action. If that last third wasn’t used against to protect the Hyperion or in the battle against Compton’s leftovers, they’d throw it all against Burge’s headquarters, along with whatever they had left from these northern assaults. If anything.

Actually, though, they didn’t end up using all of their sparse supply at Sherman Oaks, despite the fact that they were fighting actual warlocks and stuff, which caused Buffy to kind of revise her impression of ready-made magicks. Wolfram and Hart might have been messed up lawyer creeps, but they apparently knew what they were doing when it came to purchasing spells, because this stuff wasn’t something out of a demon-y Cracker-Jack box. They _worked_. And you didn’t have to be good—like, at _all_—to make ‘em kick ass. 

Not lying, she’d still prefer to have someone like Willow or Tara on this—and even thinking about Tara still gave her a horrible pang in her stomach, remembering that duo, how they could just clasp hands and, _boom_; world-saving moveage—but if it came down to it, she’d take these little point-and-shoot spells. It was even kind of fun, like being back at the LA County Fair when she was a kid, aiming a crappy air gun in the shooting gallery and pinging paintballs at poorly-decorated zombies. Except instead she was lobbing magical grenades at lavender-eyed warlocks and droopy, warty, bizarre-looking demons with long claws, and watching them go _boom_.

Anyway. It worked. And they had to save their ammunition. “Hold your fire! I think they’re all down.”

Their tiny army ceased fire, Nina wincing at a magically-induced slash on one shoulder, Gwen limping a little from a gouge on one leg, and Groo frowning as he prodded at a burn that had singed one side of his head. No more hair there, sadly. Poor Fabio. “Shall we see if there are more foes to vanquish within?” he asked, clearly looking for some noble payback.

Buffy exchanged rueful glances with her dance partner. “Ready for the rough and tumble part of things?”

“Always, luv.”

In they went.

***

They saved about one-third as many people at Sherman Oaks. Apparently the little yellow guy wasn’t as big on human slaves as the Shroud Demon had been. Maybe it had something to do with not needing subjects for experimentation. Maybe most of the people from up here in the Valley were smart enough to head north and stay hid in the fringes around the walls, or to have snuck into the wilderness of the hills and the coast during all this hellishness. Maybe they were still hidden, hadn’t all starved. The thought made her feel significantly better, though obviously they still had Burbank to clean out. And then there was the whole issue of what to do with their damaged torture-victims now they were freed. 

The safehouses were full in Clover Park, and the cupboards were bare. 'Reconstruction' wasn't really going to secure them any territories in the long run. They had nothing like enough people to hold these places. /Really we're just doing a new kind of looting; except we're kind of acquiring a bunch of new mouths to feed every time. Like with the Potentials./   
  
Talk about flashbacks.  
  
“Like Lorne’s idea of sendin’ ‘em all to Silver Lake," Spike broke into Buffy's stressed thoughts. "Could we get ‘em there, but it’s a long bleedin’ walk for people sorry as that lot.”

/Right. Logistics first. Then... the other logistics later./ They'd pulled it off the first time around, if on a (much) smaller scale. Surely there was enough food left in their bubble-city to feed all these refugees, if they just got organized with their scavenging, right? Set up details with the healthier ex-captives, or... “You think we can taxi them over in twos and threes on the dragon and the horse? At least the ones who are worst off? Maybe with a couple of caregivers, and then the rest can walk?”

Spike eyed her thoughtfully. “You wanna take the time out? Could do, and set someone as a guard on the rest, to escort ‘em. Would lose us personnel to go after Compton, and we’d lose a day or two to fly down there…”

The thought tore at her. Lives lost either way; to dehydration and a lack of basic tending where they stood, helpless in Century City, or without any succor at all and still under the thumb of who knew what kind of despicable pettiness down there in the Hampton in Carson, and god, they needed more transportation. “We’ve knocked out enough other Big Bads…” She hesitated, the thought sounding ludicrous after all this time, but… “Do you think it’s safe yet to start hot-wiring cars?”

It seemed to hit him like a thunderbolt, and he laughed so loud that it almost startled her. “Christ, why didn’t I think of that? Gotten so bloody used to walking everywhere, keeping quiet, it never occurred to me we might stop!”

She felt kind of dumb herself to not have thought of it before. “I guess… we are kind of the Big Bads now, aren’t we?” She had, in a way, been the Big Bad of Sunnydale; at least as far as the demons were concerned. Hadn’t been the Big Bad of anything for a long damn time. It felt… good. Was it horrible that that felt good? Empowering, after over a year of feeling stupidly helpless and like she’d been treading water and pushing against a formless nothing.

Spike’s arm snaked around her waist, and he pulled her close, smirking triumphantly, complete with tongue roll. “My Love, we are that. The Big Bads of Los Angeles.”

It was a lot of damn work being a Big Bad. But unlike in Sunnydale, here it was… kind of fun, actually.

***

After that everything went a lot faster. And… it was really, really nice to be in a car again. To be in one with Spike was a whole other experience. They dispatched the dragon to Connor with a message regarding their plan and told the poor thing it was on a break, watched it wing away while her guy made his very exacting choice of vehicle. (Groo elected to continue flying overhead on his Cordelia in the company of their floaty fish friend, “To be your lookout, and call out if there is danger.”)

Buffy had a quiet bet with herself what kind of ride Spike would pick. Something big and domestic, she thought. Preferably old… and she turned out to be right. He walked up and down the semi-congested avenue, passing by modern sedan after sedan and being extremely choosy… and after fifteen or so minutes stopped in front of a massive, black 1969 Mercury Cougar that had seen better days and had huge, faux red velvet bucket seats. Which, just, of course. Why not, when there were all those nice, chill Hondas and Nissans and Kias out there that looked so much sweeter than something all rusty and with Bond-o showing in a few spots through primer and was not even restored; but this was _Spike_. 

“Can’t hot-wire them as easy, pet,” he informed her staidly as he punched through the window and opened it up to poke under the fugly fake wood dash of the thing. “Look at all these lovely wires, just dangling… Here we are, then. Let’s see if it’ll fire up, sitting like this under the sun for months. Gas gone dead, I expect, or the battery will have gone tits up…”

Despite his dire predictions, the car roared to life with a blast of smoke from the tailpipe that made her cough and wave her hand in front of her face. “Where there’s smoke,” he chortled triumphantly, and waved at them to get in. “Brilliant.” And, like an idiot, bowed at Buffy. “Your chariot, my queen.”

“Well, then.” She slid past him into the giant oven, lightly dusting broken glass away from the seat as she clambered past the driver’s side and over a blistering hot removable drink-holder someone had shoved in between the seats in place of a console. Thank goodness the seats, too, weren’t vinyl. “Never let it be said that you don’t know how to show a lady a good time.” Crime promised to be rather entertaining with a pro like her William. And was it bad that this already felt like more of a date than she had had in… Well, since Spike? The only other one had been that dinner with Robin, and that had been more in the way of business, till right at the end, than pleasure, so… Yeah. 

He swung into the seat next to her. Lifted up and picked a sharp point of glass out of his butt. Grunted and tossed it out of the window before slamming the door shut. More glass tinkled out of the frame to cascade over his hair and onto his shirt collar, and he made a morose sort of face at it as if it had personally offended him, then shot a glance over his shoulder at Gwen and Nina, wordlessly slipping into the back seat. “Anyone want to wear belts, now would be a good time.” 

“He has a tendency to run over roadsigns,” Buffy informed them, smiling internally, and buckled her own seatbelt primly.

“Oi. It was just the one; and anyway, how did you even know about that?”

She kept her eyes on the road and waited, but couldn’t help the fond look that crept into her eyes and across her lips. Alright, she was having fun, dammit. “It wasn’t that hard to put together.”

He was smirking now. “Off we go, then.”

And put the hammer down.

***

It was a wild ride. They peeled around the other cars, onto sidewalks, slalomed around lampposts and signs and empty businesses like they were in a movie or on some kind of crazed, closed course; and while she held on for dear life, Buffy never once looked at the road (sidewalk, whatever). She watched Spike. He was just having so much _fun,_ flirting with disaster and chaos and looking all vivid and larger than life with the speed and the danger. She wasn’t sure she’d seen him look this entertained since…

Well. Since the chip, honestly. Except during sex. And demon-fighting. And sparring-become-sex. And they should drive more. A lot more. “What, luv?”

“Nothing. I just like you.”

That earned her a quick sidelong glance and a tight, feral grin, all teeth and just the tip of his tongue. “Well, that’s nice. Like you a bit too, pet.”

“Good for us.”

The corners of his lips quirked, and he gunned the engine a little faster as they hit the shoulder to blast down the 405.

He’d missed driving a lot, obviously.

In the back seat, bouncing around like loose jellybeans in a jar, Nina and Gwen seemed less stoked about the ride. “Does he, you know, always drive like this?” Nina asked nervously.

“Hey, it gets us there,” Gwen snapped, sounding frayed. “What I want to know is, are you two always so damn cutesie. I can’t handle it. It’s gonna make me toss my cookies.”

Buffy ignored them.

_“That’s_ what’s going to make you throw up? With _this_ roller-coaster?”

Spike slowed the headlong rush into near death a smidge after that, in deference to their passengers, and Buffy tried not to sigh inwardly at the way the girls were stomping all over his good time. 

They were back at Century City in all of ten, fifteen minutes, and god, did driving ever make a person feel for the days before there were cars! Those pioneers were hardy creatures, crossing thousands of miles up and down mountains and across deserts for a year, sweating and never bathing and running out of supplies, and she would’ve just stayed put. /At least the scavenging is gonna be easier now we're on wheels again./

With a wide, controlled swing to the left, they screeched to a halt at their destination; in front of the big Beverly Hilton sign with a nice view of most of the hotel’s parking lot. Spike put his new ride in park and patted the dash affectionately. “Alright, here we go. See if we can find us a city bus or something to wire up…”

“You can hotwire a bus?”

Spike rolled his tongue at her, high on life and perking with sensual energy. “Slayer, these fingers can get any motor running, give me time.”

“You,” she informed him cheerfully, “are a smug bastard.”

“Yeah.” He smirked back, shimmering with broad goodwill. “Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

Gwen rolled her eyes as she climbed out… but then she didn’t know. 

They found him a Big Blue Bus a few blocks away from the ex-DL’s hideaway, and Spike employed his magic fingers to good effect. The large vehicle roared to life after a certain amount of stubborn coughing—and some vampirical cursing about diesel supposedly settling better than gasoline and what was the thing’s bloody problem—and before long they were up and running in front of the valet sign. The heartier survivors helped them cart the less well-off ones into the conveyance. With a certain amount of finessing, they even got them all in. From then on it was pretty much a straight shot across central LA to Silver Lake, though the bus had a tougher time weaving through still, silent traffic than Spike’s beast of a Cougar, and he had to take it slow as vanguard. Unsurprisingly Gwen and Nina elected to ride with the stinking masses, leaving them to it. 

The longer, slower drive chafed, Buffy could tell, but she found it nice to just sit with her guy while he maneuvered them slowly around obstacles. She slipped her hand down to his jittering thigh at one point and squeezed. “I’m sorry about the DeSoto.”

“What?” He glanced over at her, had to jerk his gaze back to the road and the wheel sharply to the left to avoid hitting a stalled Hyundai in front of them. 

“I know you loved it. It sucks that we didn’t get it out.” It hit her then; the realization that had never really struck before, and should have. “You know, I never saw you drive it, after you came back from… Africa.” 

He didn’t speak for a moment, just stared at the road ahead of them. “Didn’t figure to need it again. Thought I was going to…” He halted. And his jaw started working.

/Oh, crap. Right./ Because it had been a suicide mission, in a way. She would get what she ‘deserved’—a vamp with a soul—or he’d die in the trials, and she’d get her supposed vengeance for what he’d done to her, and that deserved as well. Either way… “Spike…”

“Tried to sell it before. I was there to stay, anyway, after you…” His eyes were riveted on the road, but his shoulders… They were so tense. "I didn’t need it anymore. Wasn’t ever going to leave her. Leave where you…"  
  
/Oh God.../   
  
He went on, voice incredibly rough. "No reason to keep it. And none of the lot had the money to help much with the Bit's needs, so I thought..." A swift jerk of the head in negation. "But no one would buy; or at least, not enough to help, anyway. Had let it sit too long. Wasn’t running right.” He shrugged, voice unaccountably rough. “Then after you…” He cut off abruptly.

“Spike, I…” She was floored. Utterly floored by the thought of such a sacrifice.

He half-glanced at her out of his periphery; a swift flash of blue, quickly shuttered. “You wouldn’t’ve let me anyway, yeah?" 

He trailed off briefly, looked away, out through the driver's side window, and oh god. /I didn't know. I had no idea you would.../

But he was right. She wouldn't have taken it, if he'd been able to...   
  
God, she had been such a bitch.

“So, when I… finally did leave, I asked Clem to keep it. Sell it if he could. No reason to have it hanging about. Didn’t want it anymore. Wasn’t a help when I needed it. Didn’t want to look at it.”

/Oh jeez. You saw it as another sign of failure, didn’t you?/

Buffy remembered, with a pang, a solemn assembly they had all been forced to sit through their senior year at Sunnydale High. Teen suicide. Bullying, not that it had really helped Jonathan, and it had been really way too late for Marcie, but… _“Not just sudden behavior changes. Giving away prized possessions is another major sign,”_ the presenter had told them all quietly. _“If you see someone you care about doing that, or if they are suddenly missing things like that; things you know they love, you need to look into that, because it’s a big, scary deal.”   
  
_/Fuck./ “Did… Did he sell it?”

A barely-perceptible shrug. “Never asked. Didn’t really wanna know.”

/Shit, shit, shit./

He gave her a sort of a quarter of a glance out of the corners of his eyes; haunted and pale blue in the bright ocher light. “Hardly matters now, yeah? Even if he just stored it, it’s long since gone. Angel said the whole bloody town went tits-up, innit, when I did my vanishing act? One big bloody crater?”

God, he sounded so philosophical about it. Like he didn't want her to comment at all. “Yeah,” she managed, and stared out the huge front window of the current black land yacht. She wasn't seeing LA anymore, as she fumbled for his hand. Before her eyes hovered, instead, a vast, yawning, crumbling gulf. The emptiness of it.

That emptiness had chased her for months, after she had lost him. The emptiness that had swallowed his car, and his futility--the only gift she had ever given him, before their first time had ended--and with it, everything she had ever fought for. 

/And you./

She shivered.

“You alright, luv?”

She struggled to stay with him, in the now where he was back here with her, and the emptiness was filled, every day, with the anchoring of loving reality. Bought, paid for, earned again and again. /We won, somehow. We have each other. We fight every day to fill it. We're _here_./ “Hmm. What?”

Her hand was freed, and now it was his turn to cup her thigh; cool to warm, and bringing heat. “Lost you for a sec, there.”

Her eyes jerked back to his, and she found a tremulous smile. Locked her hand over his. Held on tight. “Lost you for longer.”

He squeezed back, eyes cutting to hers. Checking in. Reminding her that it hadn’t been. And after a short time, “Car’s just a thing, anyway. Other’s’ve lost more.” She knew he was thinking of her. Her home, her life. All of it. As if he hadn’t lost his everything there, too. “This one’ll do as well, for now.” And he patted the steering wheel of their current ride with casual willingness.

She matched his bravery. /We’re always starting over. But we’ve dug this out of the ashes. And that’s everything./ So she didn’t ask him how long he’d had the DeSoto, or what it had meant to him, any more than he asked her about the things she’d lost at Revello, and hadn’t got back. The things she never thought about anymore, because thinking about the Mr. Gordos and the ballerina music boxes from her father and the shirts from her mother, and her mother’s bedroom, and her earrings…

“It’s alright to cry, luv,” he told her softly, and pulled her close to his side, and it was only then that she realized that tears were streaming down her face, silent and startling, and where had that come from? She hadn't cried since... “If you don’t, someday it’ll swallow you until you’ve nothing left.”

It was like his words broke something open. And for the first time since the world fell beneath her feet… she did; openly, unstifled, and without hiding. And he held her, this one piece she had somehow retrieved; all the way to Silver Lake, while she finally gave herself _permission_ to mourn the last pieces of the life she’d sacrificed to save the rest.

***

The whole cross-town drop-off thing took an hour, and they were back on the road on a return trajectory for the west side of town at top speed. There Spike hotwired a couple of cars for the Westwood folks and told them where to go, then they met the bus at their next destination. (It had long since begun trundling north back toward Sherman Oaks with Nina and Gwen in charge, since those two clearly wanted nothing whatsoever to do with any trip which had Spike at the wheel, ever again.) Once reunited back in the Valley they had picked up that handful of survivors, and then the whole bunch of them turned east to meet Connor at over at Universal City; hopefully with time to spare. It was either that or Connor might have jumped the gun and gone on to attack the Burbank headquarters without them; in which case he might have gotten their army killed in the interim, but the hope was he hadn’t been that dumb. 

“You have made good time, and done much,” Groo called when they arrived, spiraling down on his massive black Pegasus, and wow. Buffy only just then realized that this guy, Spike, and Angel all had kind of a thing for driving big, black, oversized vehicles, and, um. /Note to self not to use this as a reason to get some kind of crush on Groo./ Not that she thought she was in any kind of danger there. He still seemed firmly settled in the ‘bizarre’ department for her, with a nice side-helping of ‘childlike’. “I come to report that Connor and his force remain encamped some short distance from us, to the south and east. He has discovered a barbecuing device and commandeered it,” Groo went on, “and is using it to feed the army well on ribs of Verulga, which he says are a delicacy in Quor’tath.”

“Is the bloody little savage trying to announce our presence to every demon within a ten-mile radius?” Spike demanded, incensed.

Groo looked unconcerned. “The smoke turns to the south, and there is also smoke in other places. And he has said that if you feel it is safe to drive the vehicles, then it should also be safe to draw attention with open flame, and make the morals bright in the army.”

“Morale?” Buffy asked, fighting her way through the confusing statement.

“Morale, yes.”

“By eating a Verulga.” That certainly wouldn’t brighten _her_ morals any.

Spike threw her a wry look. “Don’t knock it, luv. The whole army are demons, yeah? Probably’d eat Suvolte eggs if you fried ‘em.”

She rolled her eyes at him—both for the mention of Suvolte eggs in general as for the suggestion that anyone eat fried spider-demon-larvae—and reached into the Cougar for her axe. “I guess it’s fresher than an MRE,” she opined finally, thinking unwillingly of barbecued rack of Verulga.

“I’ll cook you up an omelet of them when we get back,” Spike averred, still hung up on making a joke out of the painful past, and pinched her butt playfully as he bent over her to grab his sword.

“Pass.” Ignoring the tweak, she straightened and jogged in place a little, trying for a warmup. Shot the girls a bracing look. “You ready?”

Gwen flexed her gloved fingers. “Anyone gets close to Connor gets zapped.” And she promptly turned away from their little party and headed in the indicated direction, muttering something about ‘getting away from the damn fish’. She really seemed super anxious around Betta George.

/What about the rest of us?/ Buffy wondered as she shifted her gaze to Nina. 

Nina smiled hesitantly and husked up a little, got a smidge hairier, which was as close as she ever got to wolfing it up in Hell-A. “Ready.”

“You know,” Buffy said over her shoulder to Spike, “if Oz knew about this dimension, he’d have never had to leave for Tibet.” She caught Nina watching her with interest from the periphery, and wondered in passing if Angel had ever mentioned Oz to the girl. “He’d have just come here every full moon.”

“We’d’ve never had Glinda on our team then,” Spike pointed out quietly.

“Yeah.” She wouldn’t trade knowing Tara for any money. Though… If Tara hadn’t known them, maybe she might still be alive, so maybe the question was, would Tara have traded?

“Ours is not to reason why,” Spike informed her quietly.

“Oh, yeah?” It sounded like a quote. 

“Something like that. Bit wrong, but close enough.” He tilted his head at her, and lightly tapped his sword on her axe, as if he were making a toast. “Shall we?”

/I love you so much./ “You bet.”

They started down toward the thin column of fragrant smoke that marked Connor’s ill-advised summer garden party. “‘Half a league, half a league onward…’” Spike murmured as they marched.

“You don’t get to do that anymore till I know what you’re quoting.

His chuckle followed her all the way down to the place where they met up to start their charge.

***

Burbank’s truckload of human debris mostly consisted of broken people. Medical nightmare, trying to sort out who they could even save. It was awful. Spike was, of course, the real triage guy for that one, since he could basically sense—smell, hear, whatever—who was going to live and who was going to die, which made for a really rotten end to the day for him; especially after a long, hard-fought skirmish to get in the door. The DL there had left behind about fifteen tall, skinny, wing-backed demons of the same type as she had been; weird pale things like humanoid dragonflies, and okay. Buffy had only seen her once, from a distance, when she had come over to visit the court at Beverly Hills with her buddy from Sherman Oaks and verify that Illyria actually existed, but in person? These things were nasty. 

Also, for such spindly things, they were stupidly hard to kill. They flitted about like insane faeries, and spat blinding venom, and, just really, ugh. Insult to injury, they were also pretty much mindless about the whole giving up against a superior force sitch. Buffy kind of thought maybe they were the DL’s larvae or something, actually. Which technically meant that they were probably killing brainless demon-babies trained to be attack-dogs, which didn't make her feel good at all about the whole thing. But since they couldn't be reasoned with...  
  
Well, there was only so much you could do about venom-spitting, stinging insect thingers that wouldn't quit, and in overall, general terms, the whole thing was a suckfest. It was an emotionally as well as physically exhausting way to end a very long day, and Buffy was really glad that they had brought the army with them, even if said army was only about ten people stronger than the bunch they had come to besiege. Because, yeah. What a crappy kind of demon to fight.

They won in the end, and it looked like Nina’s eyesight was already coming back. Gwen’s electric-finger-thing had proved invaluable—sort of like a mobile bug-zapper—as had Maria’s whole jumping-spider routine—the curly little brunette had bounced off of every wall like an insane tarantula, and really, the rest of them had mostly functioned as ground-crew for the cleanup. Stab a bug when it fell, that kind of thing. Try not to get bug-juice in the eyes or get stung or lose a head or something while they buzzed around above you.

Buffy had thrown her axe a lot.

After ranging through the hotel and killing off the other larvae—the non-flying ones, the ones on which she remembered the DL sitting like a living throne when she’d come visiting Beverly Hills, and okay, yeah, she was getting to like some demons, but some of ‘em were still just ew—they had spread out to locate the prisoners.

And prisoners there were. Most of whom, apparently, had been kept for lunch.

The good thing about people-as-snacks was that human food items were fed and watered. The bad thing about them was that they were… Well. Not always eaten all at once. Which was…

“I think we could save… Half. Maybe a few more.” Spike was sitting on a low wall outside of the hotel, amongst a bunch of dead palm trees and facing out over the valley that held the odd towers and domes of Universal Studios. A dead wonderland, and a mocking one, considering the subject matter. 

He flicked at the butt between his fingers. He’d ‘washed’ his hands by the door, as they had all done, but he seemed riveted by what appeared to be the remains of blood staining his unpainted nailbeds, eyes focusing there with worrying intensity while the ember of his cigarette stubbornly refused to fall. It was as if both fingertips and flame had captured every ounce of his attention. “The one with the arm…” he murmured, and then just… fell silent.

He was already on his third cigarette in ten minutes. By Buffy’s count he only had one and a half left in the pack. “Spike.” Reached out, touched his forearm lightly, above the tense wrist, where the marks of battle began; above the place where he had scrubbed his hands repeatedly, with the sanitizer and towel, to remove the blood. Felt the fine tremor run through him. How incredibly tightly he held himself. He was hard as a rock and vibrating; and yet so incredibly tired. And his eyes never moved from tracing his gore-stained nail-beds.

With a sigh, Buffy tried again. “William.”

His eyes jerked to hers. “My father,” he began quietly. “He was in the wars. In India. An officer. Not a high-ranking one. But he did his duty an’ all. Never talked about it. Didn’t talk much at all. I always wondered why…” Flicked at the cigarette again; an overly-concerted effort. The ember refused to budge. “He was in the pubs a lot, after. Till it killed him. That one cockerel with the big bloody mouth… Never came home pissed, but…” Those eyes, as they slid away, were haunted.

She didn’t try to ask what a ‘cockerel’ was, or how his father had died. It sounded like maybe he’d drunk himself to death. Not the point right now. Probably not a lot of PTSD counseling for soldiers back then. “And then _you_ saw things.”

He nodded, still looking out over the valley strewn with the ruins of broken amusements. They had made movies about horrors like this, down there. For _fun_. “Yeah. Watched. Couldn’t do anything about it. Made me wonder sometimes; could I have stood it. Bein’ a medic, maybe, in the wars. Bein’ a yeoman like my father, joining the regiment, though I doubt I could’ve…” Shook his head then, eyes turning back to hers. “Never was much of a man. And then…”

The William who had been was very hard on himself for what he’d been forced to endure. “What happened after wasn’t… your fault, you know. You weren’t exactly given a choice.”

His eyes flickered up to meet hers, something broken inside them. “Oh, I _chose_, Buffy. In that last second. Could have let her end my paltry life. Let it all go. But I wanted to see… _Feel_…”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.” It was something she’d never considered, really, before this year. What it must be like—really _like_—to have to make that choice. Especially when you weren’t armed with the knowledge she had. To know only… that you didn’t want to die. “And it’s not like you knew…”

He shrugged. “Knew she was some kind of demon.” He threw down the remains of the cigarette. “Didn’t know what they’d make me into, but knew I’d come back as…” He screwed the butt viciously under his heel. “…Somethin’ God, if He existed at all, wouldn’t ever look kindly on again. Still chose it, since at least it meant I’d have a chance at life. Another chance, I thought, at bein’ a real man. Havin’ a woman. Havin’ a life.” He shot her a twisted smile… and then let the vamp come up, his game face twisted into the same self-mocking smile. “Real man, yeah?”

“Stop,” she told him, stepping forward, and caught his hands in hers. “You’re helping them now, aren’t you? You’re a warrior, Spike. A soldier for the right side…”

“Wanted to feed on them in there, Buffy,” he whispered, and the agony of it tore at him; scoured his voice raw. “All that blood. Just another monster, like the ones did that to ‘em. Out here, away from the scent, I can pretend I’m a man. See it for what it is. But in there…”

/Oh, for God’s sake…/ “Of course you did, you idiot,” she told him testily. “You’re a fucking vampire. They smell like blood. You haven’t eaten a full meal in almost ten days. So why don’t you come over here and have something to eat and stop torturing yourself because you thought about doing something you _didn’t_ do because part of you needs to do it to keep you going.”

He watched her suspiciously for a moment through alert amber eyes, as if she were about to spring something on him. “Once you told me I shouldn’t get a prize for not snacking on the casualties.”

“Yeah, well…” She sighed wearily and swiped at her face with the nub of her wrist to knock off some drying goo. “I was young and dumb, and I didn’t realize how hard it was on you.” She felt her face twist. “I also didn’t know we were slowly starving you…” Gave herself a little shake. “Get up, please, and come with me?”

Cautious and guilty still, he let her tug him to his feet. Let her draw him around through the checkerboard of heat and spindly shade till her back was against one of the few trees that did not have the rough, saw-like bark of the nearby palmettos. Some kind of eucalyptus, she thought, and leaned into it with her eyes on him. Brought his gaze close with nothing but the weight of her regard. “Come here.” 

She knew he hated it. Hated having to use her for food. It was one thing when it was lovemaking first, or a pounding, thrilling mating and a bite just as part of it, with him getting fed as a nice side-benefit. They were possibly crossing some line here that he never wanted to. And she understood that. For him, before, no doubt people had been food first, the sex merely a means to an end. A way to seduce the meal into silence with his ridiculous charisma, his insane chemistry with even, like, inanimate objects. But it was always supposed to be the other way with her; with them. Sex and love first, mate-biting a part of that, the boost of her blood an incidental, and a part of the bonding. 

This…

“Buffy…” The sound of her name, muffled around his vampire dentition, would once have disgusted or alarmed her. Now she simply caught his head. Stroked the back of his neck, calming him as she once had done to the short-lived Miss Kitty Fantastico when she had been terrified by her own prowess at having brought a songbird into Tara’s dorm. The equally-terrified, lame-winged bird had fled, flopping around the lobby and slapping the cat with its good wing, pecking it on the head in its bid for freedom, till a visiting Dawn had caught the poor thing. Xander stopping by with Buffy to pick her up, had taken it outside. Told Dawn he’d take it to Animal Control. And wrung its neck to put it out of its misery, buried it with the flowers outside the old brick edifice. And Dawn, caught up in doctoring the bleeding, yowling, hen-pecked cat, hadn’t asked questions, while Buffy had held and stroked the black feline head, and…

Later, the cat had gone, too, she’d heard, in a tragic crossbow accident. Xander had taken care of that one, too, while she had been in her coffin—apparently with Spike’s help—and let all the girls know that it had been quick. Whether it actually had been, she wasn’t sure. Somehow she doubted it. But Spike would never tell; no more than would Xander. And she would never ask. “It’s alright, Spike. I promise. It’ll be okay.”

He was still; holding back, though everything in him needed this, and… “We’ll make it right. Come here.”

Starving demon dragging him, and broken man mourning, he sidled closer; repulsed as he always was at times like this, by guilt, but pulled by his need. And groaned as his body aligned with the sun-warmed heat of hers. “_Buffy_…”

She pulled his head down, remembering how he had looked, nursing at a bag of butcher’s blood dangling from her hand. Helpless to her care. A transition point to this, where once she had been disgusted to watch him drink from a mug with a straw, thinking him worse than a beast; and then, willing to feed him by hand and thinking only to save him, protect him from whatever had been haunting him. 

And now. Now she would give him of her own body, and be glad of it. “I need you too,” she told him softly. And felt him shudder full-bodied against her in shock. /It’s not just you, you know. I don’t want to think right now. Not about anything. I want to go dark, and quiet, and be in my body, and not feel anything… but you./

She had him then. Heard his low, pained _growf_ of amazed acceptance, the quivering note underneath that was a demon’s devotional. He stilled for a moment, just pulling air in; finding her scent, reading her body, her readiness. She let him, so that he would know she was telling him the truth.

And was startled when he moved away from what she thought of as ‘his’ side. Nuzzled at the other. At Angel’s side; and where all the other bites lay, layered under dense scar tissue. And realized belatedly why he would do so. “Spike, c’mon.” He was trying to punish himself. To make it less pleasurable for himself. He had told her once that it wouldn’t be as good if he had to taste what he called ‘the leavings’ of others under her flesh. “Stop it. Just…” 

But he was already dipping. Snuffling against her, his breath wafting cool over the sheen of sweat on her skin; and unbidden, her body was responding. Though… it was strange, to feel him over there. Body memory said the other side was his. The other side connected to good, sensual feelings, and this side to not-so-good, and did he want her to feel his pain with him? Or was he trying to scrub away her old scars along with his own, and make new? She wouldn’t mind washing it all away, god knew… but she would need a little time to reroute. “Help me out here,” she murmured to him. “I’m not used to…”

He dipped abruptly, all animal grace, till his face was pressed level with the button of her pants. Breathed her in, from gore-spotted jeans to navel, and god knew that was all it took to wake her back up; just the jolt of his cool breath threading through the rough cloth to send shivers over the salt-sweat of the day as his hands slid along her sides, under the hem of her shirt as his rough brow brushed up; nuzzling now along her sternum. Between her breasts; and he was murmuring something, in some language or other while his thumbs traveled now, light but rough, over her nipples. Little jolts, straight-line to her clit, and then he was up; forehead against hers, fingers on the other side of her neck… pressing. Pressing against his scar. A request. 

She caught the hand, as the hot line of need raced down from scar to groin to wake every nerve. Slipped his fingers into her mouth and sucked hard, to wet them. Drew them down to the button of her jeans. He fumbled it open as she tilted her neck aside, the way he wanted this to go. 

They had each of them instinctively bit down on the same spot, the others—even Angel in his moment of extreme distress—as if to cancel each other out, thus making a three-layered mess on her right side. Now there would be a fourth. The last one. The only. And the rest would be gone.

Finally.

As he slipped his fingers in, stroked, she was ready; jerking against him already while he mouthed at the old scars. Licked, nibbled; whispered things. Possessive things. Needy things she answered with her hips. Jerking against him until white lights began to flash, because it had been a very, very long, hard day, and her breathing had to tell him, her heartbeat…

When his fangs slid home it was different, so that she whispered his name as he pulled her in; didn’t scream it. And he yanked her close, fingers slipping home after them… and quietened them both with the silence that swallowed all memory.

***  
  
  
  
Hope everyone liked this slew of posts. You're all caught up now!!!  
  
We are still in the transition between the first war, where our people became the 'rulers' of Hell-A, to the final denouement where all... ahem... hell breaks loose as the actual gods of this dimension hit back. Important interpersonal things happen in this period, but fear not. The climactic chess match is building as we speak, because, well... Raise your hand if you think the Senior Partners are pleased that the good guys are in charge now.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna start trying to post this one more often, or we'll never get anywhere for five more months. I project this to end at about fifty-something chapters. It's long AF. Anyhoo, off we go with our final cleanup(s) of survivors of the DLs, and into the next phase of things. I'll give you a hint. Our friend with the Forehead wakes up and we get to give Spike some closure re that one night where he had his pride, you know.
> 
> Also, there's a motorcycle.   
I like Spuffy and motorcycles. It does things for me. I blame that one promo picture with Spike leaning against that motorcycle, albeit in daylight (maybe he had the Gem), and honestly he could eat me if I just got to ride a motorcycle with him first. 
> 
> Well, he could eat me anyway. You know that facebook thing where it asks how long you'd last if you got to be on the last show you watched? Six bloody seconds. Because i'd fling myself on Spike and he'd drain me and I'd be HAPPY about it. 
> 
> What. You would too and you know it, so don't look at me like that.

They were back again, at the Hyperion; slept for part of another long dimensional day. Slept like the dead in one another’s arms, down on the floor with the rest of the army, since they had all given up their beds to the convalescents who hadn’t been enough in one piece to be passed off to the new little survivors’ commune they were starting up over in Silver Lake. They would have to do it all again, soon, down in Compton, and god knew how that would go, but for right now they were all too beat to care. 

Their army were now the proud owners of a convoy consisting of Angel’s ‘67 Plymouth Belvedere, if only because he had had the foresight to park it at the Hyperion before the big dimensional shift, the Big Blue Bus, Spike’s Cougar, Nina’s powder blue Ford Taurus, Gwen’s bright-ass red Honda Accord, Connor’s green Chevy Malibu, Maria’s pickup, recovered from Beverly Hills because she loved it like her firstborn child, a dragon, a Pegasus… and one black-and-silver Harley Davidson, because Spike had caught Buffy eyeing at it with interest while he’d been standing around in the parking lot of the hotel cursing and muttering about how hard it was to steal newer cars, and had asked her what was so interesting. “I dunno,” she’d told him, and touched it lightly. “I’ve only been on one once. It was… rumbly.” And lifted her eyes to meet his. “You ride motorcycles, right?”

She hadn’t been all that surprised when it had ended up in the back of the pickup. She wasn’t entirely sure when they’d get around to riding it, but she sort of had the feeling that Spike would _make_ the time.

‘Morning’ arrived… or really, rather, nightfall in this place, and the time had come to mount their final assault, this time on Compton’s hotel, the Carson Hampton. This rescue mission involved a slightly more rigorous trek, and Buffy was glad they’d acquired their fleet of vehicles, even if getting them all down there offered its own set of problems. 

Spike had his own ideas, apparently, as to how to solve those, though. “Oi! ‘Rinne!”

One of their demon girls, the damaged Griselda’s younger sister, looked up. “Yeah?”

“You wanna drive my Cougar down?”

Her eyes lit up. “Beats sitting bitch to Maria. You bet.”

“Right then.” Turning his smirk to Buffy, he lifted a brow. “Fancy a scout of the road on the motorbike, luv?”

Buffy felt some things tighten up inside of her at the prospect. Talk about getting revved up before a fight. “I think that sounds… like a reasonable use of resources,” she agreed, and hoped it didn’t sound quite as eager as she felt.

And that was how she ended up riding extremely close to Spike’s cool, t-shirted back as the overwarm wind whipped around them, eyes peeled through the endless darkness as they scouted their route out of Downtown and onto the 110, and then all the way down to the 91… and for a while she could just imagine this was a regular California evening back in their own dimension; weaving through stuck traffic while the Santa Anas blew hot air around them and the bike rumbled under her in an exceptionally pleasant way while the world slowly faded out around them. 

As a side note, she decided she liked this Harley a lot better than that other thing she’d ridden on with that rando further into the city all those years ago. She wasn’t good with motorcycles, thought maybe that one had been some kind of Yamaha or Honda or something Japanese. It had sounded, and felt, higher-pitched and less… thrummy.

This was… Well. Almost soothing. She could sit here with Spike all night, lulled into a sort of a trance. It was damn near meditative. 

“Alright, luv?” Spike called to her as they slowed to take the interchange, their parade of cars trickling slowly in behind them.

“Definitely,” she called back, and stretched from her hunched position. “I kind of want to just say the hell with it and head to the beach, even if the ocean here’s supposed to be lava or whatever.” She frowned up at the sky. “No stars to look at, though.”

He joined her briefly in looking up at the lightless sky, then turned his eyes back to the road. “‘I’ll paint you mornings of gold. I’ll spin you valentine evenings.’” His head cocked back just enough, as he wove around a car, to catch her with the corner of his eye, and he paused again, leaning against the barrier with one leg. “‘We’re choosing the path between the stars… and I’ll be there for you as the world falls down.’”

She felt the small smile touch her lips. “Alright, I’ll make an exception for that one. What was it? You haven’t read it to me.”

With a snort, he kicked the motorcycle back into motion. “David Bowie, pet.”

She pouted at his back. “You could’ve sung it to me.”

She thought she heard him laughing as they swung around the next stalled car.

It was all fun and games, of course, until they dropped off the freeway at the border of Compton-Carson-Torrance and pulled up to their destination. The Hampton Inn was the least imposing of all the hotels they’d come to thus far, being a rather standard-sized, modern-but-vaguely-Spanish-style accommodation; one of those ‘bigger than a motel, more of a very modest hotel’ type places. A few palm trees, a small parking lot. Wholly unexceptional. And yet… there was something distinctly forbidding about it, here in the long dimensional night where it stood without a single guard or rooftop sentry. 

“Remember what Bro’os said?” she murmured to Spike as she slipped off the bike.

“Yeah. I remember.” He shut off the machine, eyes never leaving the sullen building as he nudged the kickstand down with his toe and laid the thing on it very, very lightly. “Zombies, innit?”

“More or less.” The word tended to give a person a feeling of foreboding. Especially when you really got down to considering who the Mind-Tangler might have decided to use as his soldiery with this zombifying of his. Would he have stuck to other demons, or would they be facing _human_ zombies? He hadn’t brought any to the war, thank god, but if he’d left them behind here as a rearguard… Talk about a toy surprise. 

Could they de-zombify them, maybe with Betta George’s help, or was it permanent brain-damage? And, more frightening; would she have to kill human victims tonight? 

Spike’s hand fell to her arm as the rest of their convoy pulled in behind and started finding parking, their army spilling out around them. “Whatever happens, we’re in it together, yeah?”

She pulled in a long breath. “Yeah.” Still… Dammit. “You’d think, with him gone, if he _had_… That they would… what’s the word? Revert.”

His mouth tightened into a bleak slash, and his eyes were very suddenly haunted with an expression that meant _knowing_. “There’s magick, luv, and there’s just plain broken.” Reaching into the sheath he’d contrived on the back of the bike, he pulled out his sword. Held it loosely but purposefully in his left hand. “And once someone’s so far gone, sometimes puttin’ ‘em down’s a mercy.”

/He’s thinking of Drusilla./ 

She wouldn’t comment on his sire and ex. That was… between them. But as to this… She didn’t much like it; but he was right. Not much to do about it. So she pulled her axe from the sheathe he’d made for her opposite his sword. Felt her hands tighten around its familiar handle as they tapped their weapons together. “I guess so.”

“Off we go, then.” He tipped his eyes to her, grim but determined. And came back to life a little, quirked in a tiny smile, just at the corners. “See you on the other side, Slayer?”

She smiled back, as sadly, but with the promise intact. “Always.”

***

Putting them down had been a mercy. All of them. 

Every. Single. One. The bastard had left not one human being alive in his entire compound who still had his or her faculties accounted for. 

Not even the kids.

Killing the children had been the worst. She had wanted to lock them all in the bus, try to bring them back, see if they could do something for them somehow. But they were insane, feral; screaming and biting and clawing, climbing over one another trying to get at the invaders. Trying to eat each other to get at them; gouging eyeballs and tearing at heads and…

A swarm. Of human kids. Only not. Not anymore. And every one of them had been mindlessly, insanely, savagely homicidal. Unrestrained, and un-restrainable. And Betta George… 

Just touching their minds had sent him into a big, fishy ball of agony, so that option was off the table.

Doing it one-by-one would have destroyed her soul. Spike’s. And, she thought, it might have caused some damage even to the soulless, honestly, considering the uneasy looks on some of the faces around them. So, though it wasn’t much easier to sit with, they did the only thing they could think of. They closed the doors.

And lobbed in one of their last spell-bombs. A big one. One that carried maximum range and effect. And put the kids out of their misery.

They made a silent bunch as they headed back to their home base; all except for George, who was kind of a gibbering wreck. Hopefully he’d even be able to come back from the trauma of touching those minds, though he’d been able to talk to Spike after, enough that he sounded sane, at least. 

Interestingly, while the rest of them at least attempted to comfort the fishy creature, Gwen Raiden was still staying as far from George as she possibly could. Maybe she just really didn’t like being around telepaths, like she thought he went around reading people all the time or something and was big on mental privacy or whatever. Buffy could understand that, but she didn’t think George was like that. At least, he had assured her—and Spike had confirmed—that he only heard when he listened. 

This time, Gwen’s usual standoffishness wasn’t unusual. None of them really spoke to one another when they trickled back through the Hyperion’s doors. They just all went their separate ways, wandered off to various corners of their new headquarters to find solace in their thoughts, or in each other. Whatever they could manage. 

Buffy and Spike sat together in some out of the way corner; below, in the basement Angel had once used, she assumed, as his getaway from the light of day. Sat on the one aging sofa next to the defunct blood fridge and the empty pegs of a disused weapons wall, and just held on to each other as the world fell down.

***

Angel woke up from his coma on sometime midway through the next day (day 102, if anyone was still counting); the thirty-fourth time the sun-moon had come back to haunt them. Not that she and Spike knew about that, down in the dark of their hidey-hole. They had finally fallen out, leaning against one another on the couch downstairs. Lorne woke her, crouching before them to lightly touch her knee. “Hey, Slayercakes. Your former boo has rejoined the world of the living. Thought you’d want to know.”

She blinked herself back to consciousness and stared at the heavily-lined, jade countenance, startled by the nearness. She had been so out of it she hadn’t even heard him clumping down the metal staircase. “Where did you come from?”

“Angel’s room.” A little smile. “You two were sleeping the sleep of the just. And, well… I’ve been told I’m a little light on my feet.”

/Ha. Ha. Ha./ She started to nudge Spike to wakefulness, though facing today wasn’t exactly her favorite option, so she doubted he was much looking forward to it either. She halted pre-nudge to watch him, head back against the wall, as out of it as he ever was while sleeping. Unbreathing and still, he looked like a perfect statue; some kind of fallen angel worked by a loving hand. She had once thought of her ex in those terms… but then, he had never let her watch him sleep, so... Names could sometimes be misleading. 

“It shows, you know.”

“Hm?” Her eyes were still on Spike, tracing his cheekbones, arrested by the long line of neck, shoulder, arm—he was still stained as she was with blood, innocent blood—but this time, like her, so not his fault. And it had broken them equally. She wanted to take his hand; was afraid to wake him.

“The difference. It shows.”

That pulled her eyes away, and she met Lorne’s strange ones with curiosity. “What difference?”

He smiled slightly; a sad little smile. “With Angel… there was too much, I think, huh? Too many expectations, maybe? Too much built up? Too much hope, too many dreams, for the both of you. And maybe you were too much alike. So you had nowhere left to go, when it couldn’t go where you thought. Nowhere to go but…”

/But down./ She hadn’t quite thought of it in those terms. He had a point, though.

“Here…” And the saturnine smile turned up to something sweet. “I don’t think you had any expectations at all. So there was no room to go anywhere but up, huh? I think this surprised you, didn’t it.” He pointed at Spike with his sharp green chin. “I think he surprised you.”

Buffy turned back, smiled. And took the cool, sleeping hand in hers. “Yeah, he did.”

“I think maybe you surprised you, too.”

/Yeah./

Lorne pushed himself to his feet. “See you upstairs. I don’t wanna be gone too long.”

“Okay.” 

After he had slipped back up the stairway (it really must be said that he had, indeed, an exceedingly quiet footfall), she lifted her hand to Spike’s profile, brushed it over a cut-glass cheekbone. He murmured, causing his chest to rise, and stirred to turn automatically in her direction, but did not otherwise indicate in any way that he had interest in coming back to consciousness.

/I didn’t want to either, but we have to get back to work./ Leaning forward, she brushed her lips over his. And felt him respond, coming to wakefulness at the beckoning of the kiss; coming to life. First his mouth, bit by bit; warming from the contact, becoming more mobile, then his arm, slipping back to the living to slide up, along her back, to settle at the nape of her neck. To hold her close. And he groaned against her lips. “I appreciate coming back to that, luv, but…”

“I know.” She leaned back, curled onto her heels. “I’d rather stay asleep, too.”

He watched her, eyes shadowed and wary. “What happened?”

It wouldn’t be his favorite. “Angel woke up.”

She was right. “So?”

/You’re getting predictable, my William./ “Did you wake up on the belligerent side of the couch?”

“Yeah.” He crossed his arms testily. “Come here and we can settle back down. Canoodle and forget all about that prat…”

“Who probably has important information for us. And what the heck kind of word is ‘canoodle’?”

“Means have a nice snog…”

“As if that’s even a word, either.”

“Buffy, stop twitting me.”

She leaned back to eye him along her nose. “Well, you’re making it too easy right now. You’re being all moody and adorable. And predictable.” 

That got him up and glaring. “I’m not!”

She just smiled. “Whatever you say, Spike. I’ll meet you upstairs. I have to pee.”

She got up and passed him to leave him fuming and impotent at the bottom of the stairs, aware that this was probably the best way to get him to follow. /Get his goat and he’ll go anywhere, if only just to finish the argument./

As expected he was waiting outside the lobby bathroom when she came out, leaning against the nearest wall and looking all moody. “I’m not predictable. I’m a right mercurial bastard.”

She patted her hands dry of the sanitizer. Wiped the residue the paper towel she’d brought out, leaned back in to drop it in the basket… then patted his face soothingly in a way calculated to drive him completely nuts. “Of course you are, my totally volatile vampire.” And passing him once more with a sweet smile, she headed for the stairs.

“You’re being a right infuriating bint, you know that?” he demanded, next to her once more as she headed up.

“I know,” she answered equably, and kept climbing.

That stymied him. “So, what; you’re just doing this to get a rise out of me?”

It was actually kind of nice to know that sometimes she could play _him_ like a fiddle. “All you’re thinking about right now, huh? And you’re on your way where I want you to go.”

He stopped dead on the stairs. “You unbelievable…”

She turned, lifted a brow at him. “If you didn’t see it, I have no sympathy. Come on.”

He must have thrown in the towel, because he did end up entering the room behind her, though she barely noticed for the moment, caught up as she was in just being grateful at the change in Angel when she stepped inside. He had been so deadly pale and wasted-looking when they’d brought him back; like some kind of waxwork of himself. And, of course, she’d kept thinking he needed blood, which was dumb, because blood couldn’t save him now that he was human.

It was actually kind of frightening to realize that that kind of failsafe was welcome, to be treasured where once it had been more along the lines of ‘acceptable risk’. The idea of one of her vampires becoming like that… /Look what happened to him here, now he’s human. Look what happened to Xander for being mortal and following me./ The thought of… 

/_No_./ It was a road to the kind of loss she had seen too much of. /Another reason you should never try for this Shanshu garbage, Spike. It’d be too damn easy to _lose_ you./ 

But, sans the quick-fix of blood they at least had Angel eating. And he looked animated again, so whatever the spell did in place of IVs and transfusions had done the trick. Probably the coma was just to give his body time to recuperate, rebuild resources after all the blood loss and stuff. He still looked horribly haggard, but he seemed at least a little less like a corpse at death’s door. He was even smiling slightly, if in kind of a haunted way, as he talked with Lorne. 

“Buffy!” he exclaimed when he caught sight of her in the doorway, and then with slightly less enthusiasm, “Hey, Spike.”

“Hey,” Buffy answered, very quietly, while Spike chipped in with a neutral, “Good to see you back in one piece, Peaches.”

“Yeah… I guess I have Buffy to thank for that again.” His eyes on hers were dark and filled once more with that odd combination of gratitude and a drawing-in, as if he was still hoping that it meant more. That he had a hold on her, a way to bring her closer. 

“Yeah. Me, Connor, Groo,” she deflected. “What happened down there?”

He sighed and looked away, up at the ceiling. “Gunn was watching while we fought the demon lords. He wanted to make sure that if we failed…” He faltered, sounding pained. “If _I_ failed,” he amended, “he’d be there to pick up the pieces. He wanted to lead our surviving army, rescue all the survivors before they could get slaughtered…”

“Oh, was _that_ his plan?” Buffy thought maybe it might have a few holes. 

Spike snorted derisively. “I’m sure regaining his lost Slayers and Betta George had nothing to do with it.”

“Well,” Angel allowed, “he thinks he’s on a timetable. He’s got these visions telling him to collect all these artifacts. Use them to make a new time-loop. Wes says they’re coming from the Senior Partners, not the Powers That Be, but he doesn’t believe it. He thinks he’s gonna Shanshu if he wins this thing. Saves everyone from my mistake.” His scarred face twisted. “I think he thought he could recruit me. That I’d be… I don’t know. _Proud_ of him.” He sighed heavily and rubbed his hand over the raw, new scars on his face. Winced. “I probably made a mistake when I told him he was deluded. Nothing more than a demon, whatever he thought. That he wasn’t the hero of the story; because he obviously thinks I’m the villain. So he attacked me…”

“Yeah, Granddad. Real diplomatic.” 

“Thanks, Spike. I think I figured that out when he ripped out the spelled artifact that contained the glamor, and started beating me within an inch of my life.”

Well, that answered one pressing question. “How the heck did he know how to…” Buffy wasn’t sure how to word it. But then, she wasn’t entirely sure how the glamor had worked, really.

“Vision, I guess.” Angel gestured to his abdomen, where that one godawful, gaping wound had leaked blood all over his shirt. “Never thought anyone would guess the thing was in here.”

/Okay, wince-time./ “So, what?” Buffy demanded. “Now the spell’s just…”

“Broken.” Angel supplied, and waved his hand in front of his face once, twice. 

No bumpies, no pointies. 

/Well… shoot./

Angel had a troubled look on his face, though. “Actually, I guess maybe it couldn’t have been his visions, now I think about it. Not if they’re coming from the Partners, like Wes said. They…” He trailed off. “Maybe he had an artifact on him that told him where to look. Or he could sense what I am now, somehow. I don’t know…”

Buffy was having a hard time following the logic. Why wouldn’t the Senior Partners have told Gunn to kill Angel?

“Doubt it,” Spike muttered. “You didn’t even feel all that different to me, and we’ve got the bloodline. I mean, you felt off, but the only one who knew for sure was Buffy, right at the beginning, and that only because your bond with her snapped the minute we got here.”

Something seemed to percolate through Angel’s being, and his eyes settled on Buffy’s, his expression oddly… knowing. “Oh. That explains… a few things.”

/Explains what?/

Behind her, Spike went stiff in that way that said he was abruptly and very thoroughly pissed off. And beside the bed, Lorne tensed from cheeks to toes as if he’d been hit by a tidal wave. “For God’s sake, guys, try not to knock me out, alright?”

“Okay, what is it _this_ time?”

Spike’s voice was taut. “Later,” he told her tightly. “Go on then,” he instructed his grandsire, sounding bitter as hell.

“Well, without the strength and the agility, obviously I couldn’t fight back, much less take the beating he was handing out, so…” Angel shrugged, grimacing and gesturing at his body laid out in the bed. “I guess I was on my way out when you showed up?” This last, directed at Buffy.

“Connor wasn’t going to wait anymore,” she answered quietly, and looked around. “Where is he, anyway?”

“Out looking for Gwen,” Lorne supplied, and pushed himself to his feet. “She went out to hunt for another one of those hairy, pig-looking things to fricasee for the crew. I’ll see if he’s back yet.” He squeezed by them, leaving wary glances in passing. She thought she heard him murmur something to Spike—maybe it sounded like, “Play nice?”—but it was pitched too low for anyone to hear who wasn’t a vampire, so, sure. Fine.

Angel looked askance, clearly waiting to hear an explanation for his son’s absence.

“Long story,” Buffy supplied, since Spike seemed to have lost what little he’d had of a talking mood. “While we were out cleaning out the DL houses, Connor got the army hooked on barbecued Verulga.” 

Angel shuddered. “That sounds… gross.”

“Pretty gross, yeah.” 

Angel canted his head a little toward the vacated chair, but if she took him up on it she was pretty sure it would start a riot, so she just shrugged and remained where she was. “Connor will want the spot when he gets up here. We’ve been sitting for hours.” And before he could start pouting at her, because yes, he could still get to her a little when he did it, she crossed her arms. /Be strong./ “I’m sorry. About Gunn.”

Angel nodded and looked down at the blanket, hands picking palely at the design on the burgundy comforter. “I hate that that happened to him. Hate that… he hates me. We’ve worked together for so long, to help the people here. I know he thinks I betrayed him. Betrayed all of them, but it still really sucked to hear him tell me that I don’t care about this city. _His_ city. That I’m a transplant and that he was born here, so I would never understand.” His eyes flickered up to meet hers, seeking comfort, reassurance… Maybe absolution. Which was kind of hard, since she kind of got where Gunn had been coming from with that. Angel, much as she knew he cared about everyone, wasn’t a native Angelino, and it wasn’t the same. 

Harsh criticism, though, and it had clearly hurt him. “That I’d sent his people, like Anne Steele, to death along with everybody who ever came to the youth shelter—the kids he fought to keep alive on the streets, everyone—‘cause they were the ones who always die first…” 

/Anne _Steele?_/ 

His expression turned slightly pitiful, a little morose. “And he’s right. I’m never going to know the city the way he does. I _am_ a transplant. And at first this was just a city like any other to me. They all seemed the same.” And then his eyes jerked back up to meet Buffy’s, fired with protestations of worthiness. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t care! I _do!_ I’ve come to love LA…”

/I know you have./ But Buffy was still stuck on the Anne thing. It had completely arrested her attention, drew her onto a sidebar. “Who’s Anne Steele?” she asked quietly, feeling driven by an odd premonition.

Distracted by her query, Angel frowned fitfully. “Just this woman who ran a youth shelter up in the East Hills. Really dedicated to getting kids off the streets.” His expression sank into regret. “I really hope she made it, but I doubt it. She’s the type who would always put everyone else first…”

It was a common enough name, she supposed, but that something prodded at Buffy. Made her ask, though she doubted it could possibly be a thing, street kids or no. The odds, in a city this size, were too great. “Did she… have blonde hair? Used to work as a waitress? Maybe used to have other names, before?” Angel had worked as an investigator. He would’ve checked someone like that out before working with them.

The familiar dark eyes riveted on her with new interest. “Yeah. Why, you knew her somehow?”

It all felt like some kind of bizarre dream, sometimes. “Actually, so did you, though I doubt you remember. For you it was who knows how long ago, since it was before you…” She didn’t say died and went to hell, but she knew from personal experience that the things that happened on the other side of that kind of event tended to get blurry with the passing of time in other dimensions and, really, to lose their significance. “Remember when you helped me break up that little group of stupid kids who wanted to be turned, because they worshipped vampires…” Her lips twitched a little when she felt Spike jerk behind her. Because, yes, he was connected too, to this one person.

Angel blinked, startled. “Yeah, vaguely. They were all convinced that it was this great, romantic thing to be sired. You had to stop Spike from slaughtering the whole roomful of ‘em by threatening Dru…”

Spike was startled out his truculent silence at this essay. “Hey. I was _evil_ then. Not my fault!”

“Anne was part of that group. Though, she was calling herself Chantarelle, then.” 

Angel seemed thrown by that. “Oh. Huh. Small world.”

“Yeah. It really is.” And it was about to get smaller. She kept her eyes on her ex as she recounted the rest. “After I… killed you, I ran away to LA for a while. I couldn’t deal. With being me. With my life. Any of it. I worked as a waitress. Called myself Anne. My middle name, you know?” Angel’s eyes caught on hers, registering stunned realization. “I ran into her here. She was living on the streets and dating some other runaway kid. Calling herself Lily Huston... I helped her when her boyfriend went missing. We found out there was some demon stealing kids and using them as slave labor in some demon dimension under the city. We got some of them out; the ones who remembered who they were, anyway. And I knew I had to go back. Back to the work, back to my life.” It seemed so long ago, now. “So she took it over. My crappy job, my apartment, my name.” She looked down, quietly awed. “I never realized she’d use the name to do so much good. I’m glad.”

“Huh. Who knew?”

“Yeah.”

Into the silence, Connor’s voice broke through from behind them, sounding thoroughly flabbergasted. “You _killed_ him?”

/Oh./ She jerked around to face the stunned and horrified young man, uncertain how to deal with this. And fought not to elbow Spike in the gut, the way he was abruptly grinning, all smug amusement. “Um, well… See, there was this…” /Thing with the blood, and the opening and the closing, and why is it always the blood of someone I love? And of course the next time it happened I chose me instead. Because I could, and duh. Nothing reckless about it; I just couldn’t deal with that again, and if that stupid cycle ever repeats itself I just can’t. I just _will_ not!/ “This dimensional gateway…”

Angel broke in before she had to relive one of the two worst days in her life. “There was this whole thing with a statue and a portal to hell and bloodletting, and my soul, and me being evil. And by the time I got my soul back it was too late, so I signaled her with my eyes…”

That jolted her out of her old agony, swung her back around to face him. “Wait, you did what?” Behind her, Spike let out a snorting chuckle of dry amusement. She ignored him, still stunned. “You didn’t even know what was going _on!” _She paused then, considering it./Or _did_ you?/ Was this, finally, a hole in her theory? /If your soul was bound, not completely gone, you should’ve known…/ 

/Unless you were just completely disoriented./ Which would have been fair, she supposed. Angelus was very good at burying his soul and barring the door. /You could’ve had that part of you completely entombed; bound, gagged, stuffed in the deepest pit of yourself. God knows he hated what you made him feel. And the minute you were back up front, saw me, felt free again… You’d be so confused./

No part of him had wanted to die, for sure. And Angel had only been glad to see her again. He’d been in bed with her. Then, abruptly he’d been subsumed; lost in the old nightmare. He'd come back to full awareness with a kiss on his lips and a sword lodged in his chest; tears in her eyes, and a roaring dimensional inferno around him. 

He could be forgiven if he’d been a little disoriented when he’d fallen, wounded, into hell.

And yet, here he lay, being very insistent that he had known what was going on, at least on some level. And when he’d come back she hadn’t had to explain it to him why she’d done what she’d done. 

Still, as far as she could recall, he had signaled nothing to her but confusion that day. 

/No, actually, I know that for sure./

/I guess the 411 could’ve percolated through all the layers later/ she admitted. It was possible, with the soul’s train hitched back up to his demon… but it could also very well be because the trammeled soul had been there, buried but aware on some very miniscule level, the entire time, of what Angelus was up to.

Not that it mattered anymore, how it had happened. A state of affairs with which they all agreed, clearly, since Angel kind of glossed right over her protests. “Anyway; it was a long time ago. And, obviously, it’s been fixed…”

Connor shouldered his way past them into the room, slipped into the abandoned seat. And shook his head in confusion. “I just don’t know about you people sometimes.” 

Sometimes Buffy wasn’t sure either. She did know, though, that thinking of it all sometimes made her a little sick to her stomach. Best just not to remember. “Hey, what can I say? You got a lot of history, sometimes your decision-making gets a little murky.”

The teen’s head jerked back around to regard her with accusation. “I guess I can understand why you broke up, if you _killed_ him!”

Angel looked a little sheepish. “Well, actually we didn’t break up till a year later.”

Behind her, Spike muttered something under his breath about dragging things out for ages. This time Buffy did elbow him in the belly.

“You’re kidding.”

“It was complicated,” Buffy answered, and shot Spike a quelling glance. 

“Yeah. Peaches had her all confused. Buffy had to make out with me, make some time with a beefed-up soldier-boy, and then come back and try me on again before she finally settled on which vamp she wanted.”

“Shut up, Spike. You weren’t even in town for most of it…”

“I was soakin’ up the moonlight in Rio. You should try it, Peaches. It’s nice down there.”

Angel’s return shot was immediate and short. “I’ve been there. The humidity didn’t agree with me.”

“Will you two stop it!” /Honest to God!/ They needed to get Spike away from Angel before they staked each other in their sleep or something. Or, well, whatever counted when one of them wasn’t a vamp anymore. “Angel, look. I’m glad you’re feeling better. And I’m sorry about Gunn. But now you’re awake… we have a problem.”

He sighed and brought his focus back to her instead of the vampire behind her head. “All business,” he muttered, and nodded. “Alright, Buffy, what’s up?” 

/I wouldn’t have to keep it all business if you wouldn’t keep pushing, dammit!/ “We need to find where Burge’s people are. Lorne says he thinks there were multiple locations…”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.” Called to order, Angel had the grace to look slightly ashamed of himself. “I overflew enough while they were moving around to know at least a couple. Know for sure he himself mostly lived at the Biltmore. I think his sons were at the Figueroa and the Omni, and that one of them either had a fourth hotel I don’t know about, or just worked out of the Biltmore with him. I can’t be sure…”

“It’s good enough to start from,” Spike grumbled, and made to leave immediately. “Let’s be off.”

“Hey, wait. You guys are gonna to go just like that?”

“Can’t wait around for you to get better, Peaches. Got people to save.”

Spike was on a serious tear. Buffy sighed and leaned back into the room. “Feel better, Angel. We only have those last three. We’ve already cleaned out four. Connor can update you; he’s been a heck of a leader.”

Connor’s eyes on his father were full of emotion. They needed the time. She left them to it; heard them as she headed after Spike. “Hey… Dad.”

“Hey. You know… I heard you. Talking to me. It kept me here.”

“Oh. I’m… glad. I really… didn’t want you to go.”

They needed this.

And she needed to find out what the hell was bugging her guy.

Spike was waiting near their old room on the other side of the landing, arms crossed and looking out the window. “Out of fags,” he complained as she approached, fiddling with his empty pack. He tossed it down on the floor in disgust, the fragrance of stale tobacco drifting up on the still air. “Need a bloody smoke.”

Normally she would needle him into picking up his trash; a precursor, she thought, to future fights over things like wet towels on the floor, or so she assumed from Xander’s adventures in living with the undead. But not now. “Spike, what happened back there?” she asked, and laid a hand on his still-tense forearm. 

He didn’t bother to prevaricate. “Ponce thinks he still has you, Buffy,” he answered briskly, and flicked empty fingers at the high window in the stairwell. “Thinks I’m… a default, and if he hadn’t gone all human on you…” He shrugged tightly, leaving little up to the imagination.

/What?/ “I don’t get it. Why would he…” /I thought he thought he’d get me if he _was_ _human,_ not… What?/

Blazing sapphire eyes snapped to hers, filled with shards of cutting ice she knew by now were not for her. “Because he thinks the only reason you let me bond you was because you weren’t under his bleedin’ influence, innit? That if you could’ve felt him then, you’d’ve never done it. Because he’s the bloody be-all, end-all, and you’d never want to let him go to let the likes of me have you, would you? Not if you were in your right mind.”

/Oh, for God’s sake./ Vampire territoriality at its finest, some of it so goddamned subtle that it had flown right over her head. “At what point,” she managed in what she hoped was a conversational tone, “will this stop?” She felt suddenly very tired of the whole damned thing. “All this pissing in the corners over me?”

He lowered his eyelids, shuttering the blue. “Not sure if it ever will, Buffy. He had you first, and he’s been mixed up with the demon for so long… Even without it he still has some of the mentality, I think.” He shrugged. “Apparently even when the demon’s on hiatus. You wouldn’t think, but maybe it’s like you said, and the memory sticks around without, either way. How it feels." A faint shrug, a twitch of the lips. Sardonic amusement. "Evidence for you, Love, did you want it, that the vamp makes the man as much as the man makes the vamp.” He looked away, out into the brightness of the coral morning. “Because, tell it to you straight up, Love; when it comes to that… that claim? Somewhere in the back of the demon’s mind, he’ll always believe you belong to him, even if up here, at the front…” He tapped his forehead. “…He knows you don’t. It’s… a hard thing to fight.” 

“A hard thing to fight.” This was one of those moments when she really kind of wanted to punch him; not because it was Spike’s fault, but because he understood the demon. Because she just wanted to punch vampires for being vampires. /Or, apparently, even ex-fucking-vampires, goddammit, since even when they’re human again they think I’m fire hydrant…/ And she really, really wanted to throw a punch at the nearest person who could pull game face right now. 

/But I don’t _do_ that anymore./ So instead she turned, walked three precise paces away, and drove her hand furiously through a solid oak door.

“Hey!” a weak, shocked voice called from within. Cheeks’ voice, luckily, and not one of the newbies who’d be terrified at the invasion. Still. 

“Sorry,” she whispered to the convalescent she’d disturbed with her out-of-control irritation. But seriously? 

Fucking vampires.

“I’m sorry, Love. For what it’s worth.”

It took a few seconds of serious, through-the-nose breathing, but she managed to answer in a tightly controlled way. “You didn’t bite me first.” /_Claim_ me first./ “And I volunteered for it.” /Even if I didn’t know what I was volunteering for. Heck… it wasn’t like Angel was even in the right headspace to warn me, so…/ Bygones and all that. 

“Still sorry.”

He had the room to be, since however it had started, he wasn’t the one who had been acting like she was a personalized dog treat ever since. He had the decency to play it a little cooler. 

But then he’d always had. Willow told her once he’d said he’d love to bite her, but that he ‘Didn’t like to be so obvious’. A possibility, incidentally, that had put Buffy's back up even then; she’d thought because how dare he threaten her friend. Now, of course, she knew there was more to it, and…

/And you wanted this. You _knew_ this time. You _invited_ it, you love every second of it. It’s completely mutual, and this is just some kind of irritating… side-effect you have to deal with to enjoy what you want. So stop playing the victim./ Accordingly, she fought for a more natural rhythm to the whole oxygen thing. Closed her eyes, focused on the smarting of her knuckles, the satisfying bruises already rushing toward healing. “So, just exactly how primitive are these _van-tal?_ Isn’t that what the Pyleans keep calling them? Your demons?” /Just out of curiosity./

She could be primitive too, after all; and had been, on occasion.

She heard Spike squat behind her, half-felt the rustle as he leaned his head against the wall. “Pretty damn primitive.”

“So I noticed.” She had maybe stilled enough to turn back and cock her head at him. /How cool, exactly, do you play it, really, then?/ Best, after all, to be informed. “How much of you wants to just bite me in front of him all the time, like some kind of vamp equivalent to banging me over the head with a club and dragging me off to your crypt?”

He eyed her warily for a sec before looking away to idly pick up some piece of debris from the floor. Studied it for a moment as if it were of vital interest. Tossed it sharply away from himself. “No answer here that won’t get me into trouble, Slayer,” he responded quietly, and returned his gaze squarely to hers. “Help any to remind you it’d be the same if I was the woman and you were a bloke I’d bitten?”

/Claimed./ He studiously avoided saying it, and she knew why, but there it was. She sighed and rubbed a hand over her hair. Gave her ponytail a firm reset to remind herself that, whatever the circumstances, he wasn’t the one who was using the damn demon as an excuse to act like she was property. He never had. Heck; Angel never even had… until another vamp started showing an interest. And then all the sudden the pissing contest. 

/Well, that’s not entirely true/ she reminded herself. Angel had always been… a little territorial about who else she might date. Like they needed to be a certain type to get his seal of approval; to get the handoff. Like he had to give her away or something, if he couldn’t have her; almost like he was her father on a wedding day or some crap. /Like he _owned_ me, got to choose who I ended up with if it wasn’t with him; and it for sure couldn’t be with him, but since he ‘wanted me to be happy’…/ They had a bond. He’d known it. And it was really hitting her, so incredibly belatedly, /He let that sit with me, after he left; let me pin all my hopes for love and a future on him, put all my fantasies into us, and then when that didn’t work, he used that influence he had on me to convince me to put all my hopes for love in the future on what he _said_ I should… even though the type of guy he told me I should go after was never going to satisfy me./ 

It was like being buried under a falling building, the weight of that realization. /God, did he know that? Know that on some level I would always have to turn back to him, because I got a taste of the thing that _would_ satisfy me, but he already told me that I couldn’t have it and shouldn’t want it?/

/So I kept turning it away when it was right there in front of me. Holy fuck./ 

Meanwhile, there was Spike. He could have tried to claim her hundreds of times when they had been fucking, during that four-plus months post-resurrection, and he’d never even come close. He’d never even gone fangy at her during sex; or at least, if he had, he’d hidden it well. And yeah, sure; he’d been testy about her having kissed Angel after she’d sliced-and-diced Caleb… but that had never been about ownership. He’d always known better. That had been about insecurity, and about new and growing, uncertain things. About old and uncertain things. Between him and Angel, and between him and herself. 

This thing with the claim… It was just another layer on top of old wounds and old irritations. And her guy was, she knew, doing his best to be circumspect about it. To respect her as an individual, and a powerful woman in her own right who didn’t have to belong to either damn one of them. But Angel, with his constant poking at the thing, wasn’t making it any easier.

Because Angel _wasn’t._ What? Respectful? Circumspect? Or he just didn’t care, as long as he got what he wanted? She wished she knew. She wished… “I wish it wasn’t like this,” she managed after a minute or two, and thought she saw Spike tense. /Not what I meant, so stop it./ “That he wasn’t here to make this so hard. Because when it’s just us…” His eyes rose to hers, and she caught his gaze as she might his hands. “You’ve never been anything less than respectful about it. But I know that once he starts…”

He bit his lip. Nodded. “I’m trying, Buffy. Just not sure he’s ever gonna let it go.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

His voice roughened. “Not your bloody fault.”

“I know that too.” It didn’t change things though. 

They couldn’t alter the situation. Not right now. And it wasn’t like you couldn’t change other people. But she thought at some point here she was going to have to have a serious talk with her ex. Before she had to do something much more drastic to him than Charles Gunn had tried to do.

***

They were all suited up to head out. Connor had even dragged himself from his father’s side. Everyone who was going to the Biltmore was rustling around near the front doors of the hotel, talking in small groups or already heading for their vehicles, as in this case they’d be taking the fleet of smaller ones for use in transporting folk. The better-off survivors could walk as far as the Hyperion, and they could load up the bus from there.

Buffy watched the last-minute preparations for a minute or two. Looked over her baby Slayers; more mini-veterans by this point, if still in need of serious training, and god, somehow she’d need to find the time for that. And felt eyes on her from above. 

She looked up. Saw Angel; haggard still and too thin, standing there looking down at her from the stone balustrade that lined the upper landing of the stair with Lorne hovering at his side. 

She felt Spike tense beside her, knew that even without the sway of blood Angel was using old, buried, festered things to pull at him, or push him, or something. And just his presence up there, watching, was probably an attempt to tug at her as well. 

/Alright. Fine. You want it to be now?/ All the sudden, it felt like now. “Wait here,” she told her guy, turning to him.

“Buffy, we’re about to leave.”

“I know.” She caught his eye; reassurance and a promise. “Be right behind you. There’s something I’ve got to do first.”

His tension built for a second, his eyes flickering up toward the man standing on the upper gallery; a tension she knew meant old things. But he would trust this time. Could trust. She wouldn’t need to ask it of him. 

She kept her eyes on him, let him see the promise written in them. And waited till he nodded. “Be quick, luv. Got a deadline.”

“I know.” Turning, heart swelling with relief and pride for where they were now, she moved toward the sweeping stair.

Angel, as she approached the top, seemed to be swelling too. And she knew; he thought the opposite of what Spike now knew. What he had chosen to trust. Angel thought she was coming up to tell him that, yes. If it hadn’t been for this, she would have never chosen as she had. That he still had her heart. That maybe she’d kiss him goodbye, give him hope for the future. /I’m sorry/ she thought as she approached him, /but you’re wrong this time./

She could ask him to step aside with her, out of hearing of their audience, to save his pride. But that would put her out of Spike’s view, maybe out of his hearing… and that would be asking far too much. Because when it came to a choice of who to hurt… Unfortunately that choice remained crystal clear. She had long since hurt Spike more than enough, still needed to atone. And what she had done to Angel, what he had survived and overcome because of her… Well, it couldn’t be helped, and there wasn’t any atoning for it. The scales for that didn’t even exist, so she had had to put that guilt aside. Face the now clean. “Angel, I need to ask you a favor.” /Start from that whole quiet strength place./

“Anything,” he answered, soft and sincere. The low tones highlighted his friable form, and she hated to kick him while he was down, but… It needed to be done, and it needed to be swift. Even a little ruthless. 

This had gone on long enough.

Reading her intent, Lorne winced and backed away, clearly wishing to be anywhere else. She didn’t watch the empathic demon’s retreat into the shadows of the hall, her eyes drilling instead into the dark gaze that had once riveted her to the spot, claimed every ounce of her attention, her heart. “I need you to stop.”

Whatever Angel had been expecting to hear, it had not been this. “Stop what, Buffy?”

/No./ “You know what. Please. Stop. It’s over. It’s done.”

His face twisted. Set. “It’s not. I’m different now. And you know you wouldn’t be with _him_, if you’d known…”

/Oh for God’s _sake_, Angel!/ “I would.” She said it as quietly as she could, but as firmly. And never backed down with her eyes. 

“I don’t accept that.”

God, he was stubborn. Holding on past all evidence of his eyes, his ears, their own fallout… /I sure can pick ‘em, can’t I?/ 

Probably she needed them that dogged and persistent just to keep up with _her_, but still. There was a point. “Angel,” she began again, trying another tack, “when you were dying in Gunn’s nest, who were you talking to?” She was pretty sure she already knew the answer, but if it was needed to make a point, she’d corner him into admitting it.

He seemed ultimately thrown by the question, however. “What?”

“I saw your lips moving, before you went out. Who were you talking to?”

He started to get super uncomfortable. Crossed his arms. Leaned back against the nearest pillar. “Buffy, that’s not…”

/Ruthless, or it won’t ever stop./ _“Who_, Angel?”

His eyes cut away. “Cordelia. She… came to me. When I realized… that was it. I was going to die. I mean, I know it wasn’t really her. Wes says Cordy can’t break through, that she has no power in this dimension, but…”

Buffy nodded along, because she had known. It was so obvious by now. And it didn’t really matter, honestly, whether the person he’d seen was the real Cordelia, or just some construct his mind had needed to keep him going. He had seen _her;_ not anyone else. “What did she tell you?” Buffy asked softly.

He sighed. “Wes told me that I never gave up the Shanshu like I thought I did. They never filed the paperwork. And then I saw Cordy and she told me…” He halted abruptly, seemed to reroute what he was about to say. “It doesn’t matter. Anyway, I had a bad dream. A vision maybe. Of what would happen if I did get it. Because I know… this isn’t it.” He waved a halting hand over his injured form. “I haven’t earned it. In the vision…” He faltered. “I got to see what I’d be if I got that now. A reward for doing all the wrong things. Me; standing alone, without…” His voice cut off, and when it resumed, it was bleak. “Surrounded by…” His jaw tightened. “Bodies.”

Buffy flinched inwardly. /You have a problem, my dear. You’d think you’d already paid for anything you might ever do wrong as Angel when I sent you to hell. And all this atoning for the stuff Angelus did… For God’s sake…/ Didn’t he realize by now that that was never _him?_ “They say these Senior Partner guys are handing out a lot of visions around here lately.”

He grunted at that. “Yeah. Maybe.” He didn’t sound like he believed it. “Cordy… told me I could go, right then. Avoid that fate. Or I could keep fighting, find a way to stop it somehow. And the next thing I remember is Connor telling me I needed to keep fighting, so…”

She nodded. And, as always, the old strings of her heart wanted her to touch him. To help him. But this time she kept her hands where they were, folded inside her own arms. She so could not muddy the waters now. “Angel, you know what it means that she was the one who came to you, right?”

He wouldn’t look at her. And suddenly Buffy felt very tired. “I’m not your consolation prize.”

That jerked his head up, a half-formed protest on his wasted lips. She didn’t give him a chance to get it out, her voice hardening. “I don’t want to be wanted just because you lost someone you loved like you loved Cordelia. And I don’t want you to want me just because you’re pissed off that you lost some kind of imagined contest between you and Spike, either.” 

He jerked at her now-harsh tone, eyes tightening as he stared at her. No stopping now, though. “Because there was never any contest, and you know it.”

“Buffy…”

“We were _over_. You love someone else, whether she’s still with you or not. I moved on.” She held up a hand to forestall any further interruptions, because she had already tried gentle, and he wouldn’t accept it. Now she had to be firm. “You need to grow up and deal with that, because God knows I’ve had to; a long damn time ago.” 

He stared at her as if she was some kind of stranger. She drove the point home; another sword through his heart. “A _long_ time ago, Angel. And so did you. You just don’t want to admit it.” She allowed her voice to gentle then, because she thought he was shaking; whether with weariness or with grief, she wasn’t sure. “I know it’s hard to let go. Believe me; I know how much is wrapped up in this. But it’s not helping you.” She permitted one short step closer, caught his eyes with hers. And prayed he really did still love her enough to care. “And it’s _hurting_ me.” 

He closed his eyes. And she knew, then, that it was actually done. “I’m sorry. I never wanted…”

“I know. Neither did I. You _know_ that. But…”

“But…” His eyes opened again, full of pain and loss, but now, also, the beginnings of acceptance. “We lost all that a long time ago.”

“Yes.”

“It died.” The pronouncement laid heavy on his tongue.

/It died, you died, I died… Things wither when you don’t feed and water them. When they’re not planted in the right season. Whatever. We… faded away./ 

She watched it wrench in him. And very suddenly didn’t want to watch anymore. “I’m sorry,” she told him, gentle now… and hoped that the gentleness wasn’t too soon. “I have to go.”

“Yeah. You… go. Those… people. Need you.”

“You’ll be back in action again anytime now.”  
  
“Yeah.” Dubious, now, and a little sardonic, but no more strings pulling her in for mercy. For sympathy. For care. 

He just sounded… colorless. Like a man who had, once more, been sent to hell on the point of a sword.

She lifted her eyes to meet Lorne’s; to call him back from where he stood in the shadows. It would be tough on him, to care for a shattered soul. And maybe her timing had been awful. Maybe this illusion had been all Angel had been hanging on to while he fought to heal and reclaim some part of himself in this place. Maybe, having lost everything else, having the mirage stolen from him as well would be…

Lorne shook his head at her as he approached; a swift but steady denial of her incipient guilt that said there was nothing yet to be remorseful for. And though his eyes were troubled, his attentive form said he’d be there in case Angel did anything he’d regret. That he would see to it that she would not come home to that guilt, too. “Come on, big guy. We need to get you back to bed.”

Angel turned without a word, let himself be shepherded weakly toward his suite. 

“Thank you,” she whispered to the viridian demon as he passed. 

He nodded, though he didn’t say a word, and his eyes said everything to her about shared regret and an understanding that absolved.

Pulling in a deep, shaky breath, Buffy sent up a brief… Well, she wasn’t sure if she believed in prayers. A message. /If you Powers assholes actually care about him, keep him alive through this, will you?/ And, at a loss for anything else to do, she dropped her hands and turned for the stairs. For Spike, waiting for her at the bottom, watching her with glowing eyes. 

“You alright, Slayer?” he asked as she approached, but she didn’t think she had ever heard his voice sound so vibrant. 

“Yeah.” She lifted her eyes to his. Tried a smile. And realized… she actually thought that she was. “Let’s go do the thing.”

He didn’t answer, but she was pretty sure she could hear him, there, in her blood. Singing.

***  
  
  
  
  
Have I mentioned that I adore Lorne?


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last of the calm before the storm... and the beginnings of where we pick up with... Well. A new thread.   
VEG.  
Enjoy the lull while you can.

The Biltmore was really just the most incredible hotel Buffy had ever seen in her entire life. The indoor pool was like, _acres_. All marble, with gold accents on the marble-tiled walls. The ‘throne room’ looked like something out of one of those palaces she’d seen in Europe; the ones the rich old Italian and Scottish lords had lived in while they’d ruled over the broke-ass peasants. There were huge, heavy, carven marble curlicues around mirrors, and massive leather-bound chairs, and thick, oriental carpets in red, silky underfoot, and literal sconces on the walls, and real gold on the ‘appointments’, and, just…

Wow. Burge had known how to pick an administrative center.

Of course, the pretty was marred by the presence of hulking, armed demon guards standing in front of the storage rooms and laundries below. All of the gift shops and stuff had been completely denuded of what she was sure were diamond necklaces and god alone knew what kind of finery, but it turned out one of those trolls of Burge’s was guarding not slaves but a treasure-room. Which, sure. Demon dimension, but why not keep a whole room full of gold and silver and diamonds, for exactly no reason at all.

The other, more trade-able currency—aka the humans—were in the other guarded areas. Luckily, their buddy Burge had tended more toward ‘bulky and muscular’ than ‘intelligent’ or ‘fire-breathing’ or ‘stingy’ or in any way magickal when it came to his personnel requirements, so they managed to take out said guards with a minimum of fuss. Probably the idiot gargoyle-king had thought he’d be done with his little war and be back in time for breakfast or whatever, so he hadn’t bothered to leave a serious garrison behind. 

She let her baby Slayers do in one of them all on their own. They performed adequately. Even with a modicum of style, if she said so herself. 

They had the entire hotel in their hands in about twenty minutes, and all the surviving human refugees up in the lobby in the first hour. They were even in pretty decent shape, which was a relief, considering by this time Buffy was starting to feel a serious level of dread every time they entered one of those locked people-keeping rooms. This time around, though, it seemed that the stupid-but-efficient guards had been instructed to keep the chattel more or less alive and kicking; i.e. they’d been vaguely watered and maybe even fed once or twice in the interim.

Though, the toilet-buckets in there were… just not something anyone should ever discuss again. It appeared that no one had bothered to mention to the staff that someone might need to take those out and dump them into something else once in a blue moon.

Hopefully their new acquisitions wouldn’t end up with dysentery or cholera or something. “They won’t, won’t they?” she asked Spike, hopefully.

“Not if they weren’t drinkin’ it,” he answered grimly. The stench hadn’t been kind to vampire nostrils. “Water they were getting was probably fresh.” His eyes slipped past her to rest on several drawn, sickly faces. “Hope so, anyway.”

Buffy shuddered and waved to the next small group of shaking, disjointed folk making their way toward the lobby. With this set of survivors being generally intact, the team's main function here was mostly getting the exodus moving toward the vehicles. 

There were a lot of survivors, was the thing. More than they had expected, based on previous estimates and experience. Enough that they were going to need the bus for a second wave, and wow. The last few runs had made them cynical. They had come to expect fewer rescues. 

“It’d be easier if we had another bus,” she pointed out as they slipped into the Cougar. They had three somewhat smelly new recruits in the back seat, and a pretty much nonverbal kid next to her; and how much of a relief was it that there were some kids alive, in there? “Then we could just send ‘em all up to Silver Lake in two buses and head straight to the next hotel.”

That earned her a sharp, thoughtful glance. One that said her guy might be willing to go through the fuss of hotwiring another diesel if it meant getting these offensively malodorous humans off of his pretty, red, faux-velvet seats. “You see any around?”

Twenty minutes later they had a striped Metro bus up and running next to Big Blue, and all their newly-acquired refugees had been transferred onto said vehicle. One of the bunch even agreed to drive the newer bus and follow Nina in their established ride, announcing in a tremulous voice that he had worked the Metro before… everything. “You up to it, mate?” Spike asked him gently.

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” their presumptive driver answered anxiously. “Yeah, I can… Yeah. Anywhere but here, man. Completely. Yeah. Let’s do this. Let’s book. Go. On the road again. Yeah. Where are we going?”

Questionable, with the jitters and all, but they didn’t want to lose a second fighter either. Hopefully he wouldn’t crash the whole thing and kill everyone or run them off the road in a fit of PTSD.

The buses were dispatched to caravan out of Downtown for the short ride to Silver Lake, Nina in the lead, and Spike huffed a little as they turned back to the Cougar. Opened and shut the door a few times as if to fan out the air their guests had left behind in the upholstery. “Blue bus is gonna run out of juice anytime now; ‘specially not knowing how much it had in it to start. Damned gauge on the second tank actin’ all squirrely… Hope wolf-girl makes it back for the party.” His eyes found hers. “Good idea getting’ another, luv.”

“Hopefully that’ll be our last new vehicle for a while,” she agreed, ducking into their ride, “and we can put your magic fingers to better use.” The flirting kept spirits up when they were about to head into who knew what other kind of hell.

He followed her reluctantly into the car. Sniffed. Grunted in clear distaste and slammed the door shut. Turned to her before cranking the engine over. “Know how strong your hold is over me, Buffy, that you can keep me interested with a comment like that when it smells like this in here.”

She leaned out of the open window to face him, smiled, and batted her eyelashes fetchingly. He rolled his. "Doubt even that could improve the bouquet in here, pet."

With a nod, she dropped flirty act in favor of business. “How bad is it? You wanna get a new car?” To be fair, even she could still smell the B.O.-plus-tax going on in the seats, and it was raunchy. Hence the rolled-down windows.

He made a reluctant sort of face and tapped the panel of gauges on the dash… which did bring up a certain logistical point. 

“How are _we_ on gas?” Getting more into any of their vehicles was going to be a challenge. They’d have to siphon it from other cars, or just steal more since there was no electricity to run the pumps.

He leaned back again and turned over the engine. “We’ll do for another couple trips, but then we’ll need to see to it.”

She watched him put the thing into gear, hunch over the wheel. “You ever been to this Figueroa before?”

“Been past it. Supposed to be gorgeous. Not on the same level as this place, but four-star.”

“What about the Omni?”

“No. A bit further north.” He glanced over at her, thoughtful. “They were all around us. All just a few blocks away.”

“I know.”

His hands tightened on the wheel, and he gunned the engine a little harder to weave around a few cars with expert, if frustrated, skill.

She laid a hand on his. “Nothing we can do about it now.”

“Yeah.” With a sigh, he leaned back a little, relaxing as the blowing air washed away some of the stench in the cab. “Wish I had some music.”

She felt the smile return to her lips. “What would we be listening to right now?”

A broad grin answered her. “Good fight music. ‘My Way’. Obviously.” The grin faded to a frown. “Or maybe ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’.” 

“Uhuh. Of course.”

He glanced at her before returning his eyes to the road. “You need a musical education, pet.”

_/Right./_ “Punk music, you mean.”

“Well, _yeah.”_ He sobered again. “Few years back I played ‘Needles and Pins’ a lot.” And a little smile played over his lips. “Retiring that one after today. And ‘Ever Fallen in Love...’.” At her look of incomprehension his lips quirked. “The Ramones, luv, and the Buzzcocks.”

She found it interesting, this talk of retiring songs. “Sing me something.” 

His eyes jerked away from the road so abruptly they almost crashed into a nearby Nissan. 

“Watch out!”

“I’m not a bloody radio, Buffy.”

Why was he shocked? “You sound really good, though.”

He subsided, looking thoughtful. “Not right now. Maybe later. If you get me in the right mood.”

“Oh?” Even more interesting. “What kind of mood?”

His eyes flickered away from the window again, if only very briefly. Returned to the road; but he was smiling a little, just at the corners of his mouth. “The mood that involves a fair amount of whiskey to replace the mojo the musical demon isn’t supplyin’.” The smile turned slightly smirky. “And maybe a little… loving encouragement for inspiration.”

And didn’t that conjure a picture. She had a brief but vivid vision of Spike, arced above her, chest naked, necklace dangling between them, swigging from his ever-present flask and then pulling it away to sing something feral and pulse-pounding into her eyes while his hips ground into hers and he…

Well. Needless to say it was an intriguing idea. “Sounds like it would require a little privacy.”

He made a dismissive noise. “That place downstairs is a bloody soundproof box. We could howl at the moon all night down there and no one would stir a sodding finger.” Then, with a put-upon sigh, he yanked the wheel around, turning them to the left. “Hold that thought, luv.”

A tall, cream-and-pink building made up seemingly entirely of arches loomed before them. “We’re here, huh?” Buffy asked, recognizing the inevitable. 

The army pulled up around them, everyone visible through their windows setting up, getting locked and loaded. Watching them, she randomly missed her sister Slayer. “Faith would love an attack like this,” she murmured.

Spike exhaled ominously, just shy of a growl. “Seems like her kind of thing. Go in hot and heavy. Frontal assault. Kick everyone in the teeth…”

Buffy tried a smile, though it probably came off a little tight as she tensed up in the face of the upcoming battle. “You know, you two are a lot alike.”

“Yeah.” He shot her a look. “You sure you two never…”

Arrested, she stared at him in disbelief. “Are you _kidding_ me?”

“Hey, opposites attract, luv.”

“Spike. I have a crossbow somewhere in here, and I definitely know how to use it.”

He scoffed as he cracked the door open and stepped out. “Shakin’ in my boots, pet.”

“You _should_ be. What _ever_…”

He didn’t reply, but a small, smug smile hovered over his lips that made her really wish she still hit him. Just once in a while. 

She took out the urge to swing on the next demon she saw. A really fugly one with a huge, lamp-jawed face that was dumb enough to try to slug her with a pike when they hit the tiled floor of the beautiful, old-world Spanish lobby. 

The rest of the assault was pretty basic. And the rescue was a carbon-copy, pretty much, of the last.

“We’re gonna need more buses,” Spike panted as they hustled the people out of their dank, smelly cells.

***

The Omni was essentially a repeat of the Figueroa and the Biltmore—just this time with more broken glass and modern appointments—which led Buffy to believe that either Burge hadn’t allowed much room for coloring outside the lines… or that his get weren’t all that creative. But she was good with that, since it meant more humans saved, and less emotional wreckage at the end of the day. 

By the time they got through the day’s assaults they had sent the Silver Lake encampment a grand total of three hundred and seventy-three new residents. The Hyperion was loaded to the gills with convalescents—thirty-seven at last count, some of them critical, and dammit, why couldn’t they have saved some of those oogy Wolfram and Hart spellbooks?—and no one had anywhere to sleep. 

Some of the army had chosen to crash up in the crappier rooms on the top floors of the hotel; the un-renovated spots with broken floors and no beds, if only just to grab some privacy. The lobby was still taken up with a dusting of convalescents. Groo remained happily ensconced out in the yard-atrium-deal with the Pegasus and the dragon, because he liked camping? Lorne had grabbed Angel’s old office, though mostly he stayed up in the suite keeping an eye on Angel when Connor wasn’t there; much to Gwen’s apparent irritation, and what was that girl’s issue with basically everyone?

After a brief side-trip up to the Silver Lake commune to check in on the refugees—not to mention a quick rinse—Spike and Buffy had returned to the hotel to find their downstairs hideaway had been commandeered by the three baby Slayers and Betta George, which, um… Okay?

“I mean, it’s not that we needed all the space to ourselves,” Buffy complained to Spike as she lay against his chest on the old brass twin he’d found somewhere, poking from room to dusty room in these deserted upper floors. “It’s just, you know… _ask_ first!” God, it was depressing up here in this forgotten wilderness of crates and sheet-covered old furniture and peeling paint.

Spike shifted a little on the creaking bed, trying to get comfortable. Not that she blamed him. The mattress on the thing really was as thin as his old cot had been back at Revello. “Takes you back, does it?” he asked, and dug his shoulders in a little. Really he was being very sporting, letting her lay on him instead of next to. “Like being back at your old digs, yeah? All filled up to the gills with twee slayerettes, only one telly, one loo and lucky to have three beds…”

She half-laughed against his chest. “God, don’t remind me. At least you mostly don’t have to pee.” The only time she'd ever known him to have to do so was when he'd been on a serious bender, probably just to avoid some kind of liquid-impelled explosion. The rest of the time he just seemed to... absorb all liquids. Which... was weird--like, either he should never have to or always have to, right?--but it was also not something she planned to ask about tonight. 

He grunted in response, sounding rueful. “Never got a shower, though, did I?”

She turned her lips to his collarbone, still snorting a little with suppressed laughter, and why did it all seem so amusing now, in retrospect? It had all been so incredibly dire, then. 

But it had been _theirs_. They had been like… parents, raising a gaggle of children together. She and Spike, eyeing each other over the heads of the uninitiated young, rolling their eyes for the vagaries of youth, and sharing a thousand secrets in every glance. Her house-husband, her co-trainer. And when he’d been gone… “I was so glad you were there. If I didn’t have you…” She shivered. _“When_ I didn’t have you, it was… bad.”

His hand slipped up her back, rested under her hair. “Didn’t much like that part myself, Love.”

No, of course he wouldn’t. “I can’t _believe_ you thought I would want you to leave.”

“Yeah, well. Thought you could use Wood just as well to help train the bitty babes.”

She slipped a hand up along his chest to rest it over his nipple, where his heart would beat if it could. “Robin didn’t give me what you did. And he’s nice-looking enough, but he’s not nearly as sexy when he’s…” She paused, considering it. “Well, doing anything, really.”

That statement earned her a short silence, then, “I thought he was a well set-up bloke. Worried me a bit.”

She leaned her head back to catch his eye. “I’ll be sure to let him know you think he’s hot next time I talk to him.”

“You do that and I’ll bloody well kill you.”

She smirked and lowered her head back to his chest. “The girls definitely thought you were hot. Not that I blamed them.”

Spike snorted mirthlessly. “They weren’t fooled, you know.”

She sighed against his sternum, well aware. “No, they weren’t, were they.”

“Me and my comfy crypt, and you feelin’ me up every chance you got…”

She rolled her eyes, despite the fact he couldn’t see her. Wondered if he could hear even that, which, ew. What would _that_ sound like? “Well, that’s why we locked them alone in that tomb with a vamp, right? Kill the witnesses. The ones who survived forgot all about that little slip.”

He didn’t laugh, though. He had gone on a whole other tack; stilled, turning to a room-temperature statue beneath her. “You worried about this, if we ever get back? That line in the sand, and the new bits?” His fingers slipped up, to brush over his marks on her neck. “These’ll be fresh; not some old battle-scars. Somethin’ they’re supposed to avoid, and I know you must already feel like the others are…”

/A sign of failure. At least two were, anyway. Should be, in their eyes./

His gaze stayed on her as she fought with it. “Not that they’re what they might think, when the fact you survived means they’re actually marks of honor…”

Her jerk of surprise made him smile, damn him. He did sober almost immediately, though. “Know it bothers you, the way the three downstairs watch us. And that’s here, in this place, where all the rules are different. There…”

She shifted away a little, sat up against the wall, because he was asking her to look at things that they might never have to face in reality. Things that made her extremely uncomfortable, and she really didn’t want to. /And who knows if... We might be here forever, for all we know. We might not see any of them again. The baby Slayers, Xan and Wil and Giles. _Dawn.../_

Her heart spasmed, and she shoved it away, the agonizing thought she had tried so very hard to avoid from the start, here. Because they had no idea how they had gotten to this dimension and no clue thus far how to get back. Angel and his people apparently used to be able to get into contact with these Senior Partners assholes through Wolfram and Hart, in some room or something in that building, but that had been like some kind of telephone to whatever evil dimension where they bastards lived, and what if this was it_?_ /You can't call someone on your own phone line when you're in the same house. I mean, you can, if they pick up another handset, but you're not really... You have to have somewhere to call _to;_ unless they're haunting your house, or they're haunting yours, like in 'Scream', or.../   
  
Anyway, they had no clue how the 'phones' worked here, or even how to _find_ one, and... And if one of them _was_ in the WR&H building, it was way kaput now, so that was out. And none of the old contact and entreaty spells those stupid lawyers used back in the day worked unless you were calling from the same dimension; and anyway, why would these jerks do people a favor and let them out of the zoo when they'd gone through so much effort to put them in this cage in the first place, because having them free on the other side had caused them so much trouble? /I think we're here to stay, or Wesley's ghost would've told us how to get out of here by now. He should know what they're up to. He's been stuck working for 'em./

They had long since mentally prepared themselves for the concept they hadn't spoken aloud; that they might be stuck in this dimension, all of them, until the food and water ran out completely and everyone started eating each other. And she kind of wanted to turn to Spike now, and cuddle up to him, and close her eyes and stop thinking; because she knew he would rather wither up to a husk than... /And in the end, will it come down to me asking him to drain me and then dusting himself like a murder-suicide pact, because neither of us wanna see each other starve?/ 

She fought to shake it off, stay in the moment. What it was all about right now was just focusing on the _now._ On living and loving as well as they could for as long as they could, and making the absolute most of every moment, together. /No wasting time. Not mourning anything, not looking back at the might-have-beens. Not thinking of the sacrifices or the losses. Not wondering about any what-ifs. Just living in the now. Because in spite of everything, the now is... really wonderful./ 

Buffy had long since learned not to dwell on the past; the lost, the forgotten, the what-ifs. The might-have-beens and the maybes had cost her far too much, and so had living elsewhere, in other possibilities but in the one she was in. /I've learned how incredibly important it is to enjoy what I have right here./ She would do that now with all she had, till the day they were both gone. “Spike…”

“I don’t want to stop,” he whispered, still hung up on his question. “But I will, if you need me to.”

/Oh, God./ “No!” It was out before she even realized she was going to say it, and her eyes darted away, because at this point this wasn't even about reassuring him over something that might never happen. It was as instinctive a reaction as she had ever had to anything. “No, I…” /Fuck./ Wrapping her arms around her legs, she lifted her shoulders. Dropped them. “I don’t want to stop. Ever. I love… this. Who we are, what we do.” She met his eyes again, firm and serious. “I don’t even think I _could_ stop, at this point.” And that was as candid an admission as she could imagine giving anyone. /Once I would have rather died than admit I was addicted to you./ Had slept with a cross, hung garlic everywhere as if the odorous herb even worked on a truly determined vamp, when it was really her that was the problem… and equated wanting him inside her—everywhere in her—to the same thing as Willow and her addiction to dark magicks. But it had been far different. She could see that now, from a safe distance. Willow's addiction hadn't really been about the magicks at all, but about controlling everyone around her. That was why she had needed to stop. She had been hurting others with _her_ addiction.  
  
Buffy's wanting her vampire hadn’t been hurting anyone else. /Anyone else… but maybe me, sometimes, when it wasn’t helping. And definitely you. Your choice, then, too./ 

Time truly offered perspective. Equating the two had been foolish. Buffy had been getting something she had truly needed. And yes, Willow might need her magicks as well, since they were as much a part of her as loving vampires was a part of Buffy's makeup... but as addictions went, there had been a difference. Willow hadn’t needed to control others to survive. 

But… Buffy had _needed_ Spike. 

The blood, though; the biting. The bonding of it; that was different. She was well and truly addicted, and time she admitted it. She didn’t want it to fade, between them, the way it had slowly attenuated between herself and Angel, over the years. /God, no!/ And no one was being hurt this time. Not even one of _them_. /And as long as you know what you like… what’s wrong with coming back again and again for the thing that makes you feel… right?/

Cold fire. The pounding in the blood. The freedom to let go and just _be_. 

Only question being, would that change, out there? Would knowing it hurt _them?_ The children, the baby Slayers, if... Would it make them question who they were, make them hesitate? “And yeah… I’m not sure where that puts me, when it comes to being… not even a leader. A role model. Can I teach the skills, when that means I’ll also be showing myself to them as someone to look up to when I’m…” 

She looked away again. “I’ve learned a lot about what I am. What we are. But it’s stuff they don’t know. Maybe can’t, yet. Because it takes years to deal with, and in that split-second between life and death, is it too much, to know it? Will it make them hesitate?” She turned her cheek to the side, laid it on her knee to regard him frankly. “Can they afford it? To wonder?”

“No.” His answer was immediate. “They have to strike; to kill. Because no vamp will hesitate with _them_.” He expression turned sardonic. “Most of those tossers aren’t likely to fall in love with their natural predator, yeah? No matter how nice the chits smell.”

She managed a small smile, still squeezing her arms tight around her legs. /That’s probably what’ll ‘do us in’ with most vamps. We just smell so mouthwatering./ “So… then how do I dare even show myself to them, if we ever get back, if just by being me—by us being _us_—I’m instilling that single instant of doubt?” And she let him see it; all her uncertainty, all her fears. “Will I destroy them? Or should I try to teach them what it really _means? _Where we really _come_ from? How much will that shake them up, make them question what they need to do?”

It was plain from his eyes that he had no answers for her, and she sighed, lifting her head again. “But at the same time… if I don’t share, that means I carry it all for them, alone, and can I do that?”

“You’ve done with all the rest,” he pointed out quietly, “for years.”

“The one girl in all the world?” she asked, ruefully, then stared at her knees for a minute, sobered. “I don’t ever want you to feel like we have to hide away from the world, Spike, or that I’m ashamed. Of what we are. Of _who_ we are to each other, but…”

“Hey.” He reached out, touched her lightly on her thigh. “You know I’ve always understood, right? That you belong to the world first? That I’m bloody lucky to have what I can of you?”

Her head jerked up, eyes caught on the soul pouring out of him. The humanity that had always been there, alongside the demon that, too, had forever loved her. “You shouldn’t have to take second place.” Something occurred to her then; a long-buried resentment rising to the surface. “And I shouldn’t have to do that anymore either, should I? Put myself aside for the world?”

A proud smile spread across his face at that, lighting his eyes in a way she had never seen before. “‘Bout bloody damned time you realized that, pet.”

She felt the shy smile touch her lips; hesitant and then growing bolder. It felt almost unnatural to celebrate such a concept, but… empowering. “It scares me to think that way.”

He sounded incredibly proud of her for doing it. “You keep tryin’ it on, yeah? See how it feels as the rough points wear off. Maybe by the time we get back to the world it won’t even squeak when you make a quick turnabout.”

She tried it. “Buffy Summers; Slayer at large.”

“Vampire layer?” he asked, and alright, he’d earned that light slug in the shoulder. 

“Treat for one and only, you jerk.”

He rubbed the shoulder and, smirking, settled back onto the cot. “‘Spose I’ll leave the quipping to you.”

“You really should. That was terrible.”

“It was pretty bloody awful. But funny.”

She snuggled down against his chest, shifting to find a comfortable position. She really was having a tough time getting to sleep. The current unsettling conversation wasn't helping much. “I guess we shouldn’t even be worrying about all this anyway, since we don’t even know if we’ll ever get out of here. Heck; right now we don’t even know what we’re doing tomorrow. We’ve cleaned out the demon lairs. We’re out of plans, really.”

Spike grunted and slipped his free hand behind his head. “I’m sure these Senior Partners will think of something else to throw at us. Never a dull moment and all that.”

“Damn.” She shifted again. “So. Are you gonna sing to me?”

He stilled again, and man, she was really keeping him guessing tonight. “Buffy, for Chrissake…”

She remained quiet, because she wouldn’t beg. She really kind of wanted him to, though. Wanted to hear that amazing voice again.

And because her William would deny her literally nothing that she wanted, he sighed heavily… And in the dark, a low, melodic, almost gravelly croon began to drift over her head. “‘They’re tellin’ us… they’re gonna make a fuss, about the two of us… I want you around. I know what you’re thinkin’ about, that you must have some doubts…’”

She turned her face into his neck and kissed him there. /No. No doubts./ Threaded her scarred fingers into his and closed her eyes as he sang her to sleep. 

“‘You heard that I’m no good… but I’ll treat you like I should. I want you around…’”

***

By popular acclaim, Bro’os moved back to the coast, to the little snatch of waterfront property that was afforded him by their quorum. He seemed glad of the chance to retire from public life; and more importantly, to get out from under their watchful eyes and generally away from Spike and Buffy and their people. He seemed a great deal less happy with their escort to the place they’d picked out for him, insisting he could get there on his own, but neither of them particularly trusted him to behave himself. “No offense, Teeth, but we don’t want you out there causin’ trouble.”

“Yeah,” Buffy chipped in, and smiled sweetly at him as she hefted her axe. “Think of this as an armed escort. After all you’ve done in service of the good guys, we wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

The ex-demon-lord sort of shrank into himself and jumped into his hotwired Kia like it was a safe haven. They had discussed driving him out in the Cougar, but in the end decided against it. “‘M not a bloody chauffeur,” Spike had muttered, “an’ anyway, he’ll make the soddin’ seats smell like fish oil, sweatin’ back there.” So in the end they’d settled on riding behind him on the Harley, with the added benefit of a little date away from the crush and confusion at the Hyperion afterward.

After the horribleness that had bookended their last ride on the bike, Buffy was seriously looking forward to a nice, pleasant trip out to whatever passed for a beach here in Hell-A. What with the whole ‘hanging from a bat’s talons’ sitch, she had only vaguely paid attention to the ocean-like thing they’d seen from Bro’os’ waterfront hotel when they’d last visited Santa Monica, so who knew what they might find. Granted the strand here was probably some weird, silty, muddy thing filled with octopus-demons and she might have to fight them for a chance to chill, but it was still worth a shot, right?

Something in her really, desperately wanted to enjoy a day on the beach with her vampire boyfriend, just in case they ever got out of here and it turned out to be her only chance to see him next to ‘the ocean’ in ‘the sunlight’. 

After they dropped off the ex-lord at his decently palatial, if relatively modest, estate, Spike turned the bike south and his head toward her. “Care which beach?”

“No.” She tightened her fingers in his motorcycle jacket. “I just want to be there with you.” It would complete something she couldn’t even name.

With a quick nod he pulled them back out toward Ocean Avenue, and within minutes had them rolling past the denuded remains of Crescent Bay Park. 

It was weird to step off the bike and out into the heat of a strangely arid beachfront. It was a familiar view, part of her childhood. This had been her stomping grounds, once, though now altered by high-end boutiques near the boardwalk where once there had been pinball arcades, when she was very young, and then pizza parlors with ‘Pole Position’ as the main contenders. Later that one Baskin Robbins with the outdoor seating had been the big draw. Now, all empty, the boutiques gaped soundless and dark-eyed like soulless, shouting husks.

The streetlamps were still there, if unlit, the desiccated palms lining Ocean Front Walk rustling in their mummification. The lost wonderland of dragon heads and sailing ships and ironwork gazebos remained intact in the playground and along the walks. She could see the dusty skeletons of the pier and the Ferris wheel from here; and there, at the end of Bicknell, the beach spread as far as the eye could see. But there wasn’t that sudden alteration, as they crossed the invisible margin from parking lot to sand; no abrupt shift from dry heat to moisture and sea salt and brine. The air turned oddly arid as they walked; the opposite of the humidity one might expect near the sea, catching at the throat and demanding sips from the water bottle Buffy carried, and the sea seemed much further away than it ever had before. 

She found herself frowning as she looked out over the strangely-altered landscape. The beach sand was normal, at first, as they walked it; light, fine, pale… but further on it became interspersed with something darker, heavier, and reddish-orangish-brown. Clay-ey, almost, she thought, scuffing at the intermix with the toe of one shoe. She found herself glad she had decided not to go barefoot when, having done so, the sand she turned over released a scent redolent less of sea and tanning lotion and sunscreen but of something… slightly rotten.

Lifting her head, she looked out toward the distant roiling of water. Saw that the further the beach went, the darker the soil seemed to turn, and the thicker the muddy expanse stretched. It looked almost… bubbly in places, and kind of… Well. Really, this sludge looked kind of like the stuff that came up when they flushed the toilets, so no doubt the water out there wasn’t really very ocean-y, either, even if it was super with the wide and endless. “Maybe we should stop here.”

Spike nodded agreement. “Seems like they moved the city to a coast, well enough, but they didn’t care too much what sort of one.”

Well, it was a beach, she supposed. If she closed her eyes and pretended it smelled the same, it would do. Out there, this far away where she couldn’t tell what it was, the sluggish movements of the thick water (water?) could do for incredibly lazy waves, moving like muscular animals trapped under the surface of some taut skin to slither up the clay bank, and, well… If you didn’t look too closely, you wouldn’t really notice that it was steaming. And they still had a setting sun. It was, after all, the end of another very long dimensional day, and they had _earned_ this. She would take it, dammit. /I’ll just look at him. Listen to what passes for surf out there, and look at Spike with the light of sunset on his face, and count my blessings./ 

It all looked like sunset, here. The rising sun, the midday sun; all of it. And there was something about this time of day; the time they had always met before, the time that had called her to come out to find him, meet with him. Join with him in the hunt and the chase and then, later, just to join with him. It was specific light. Special. It had a certain magic, a certain call to it. It made the blood stir. It said things were about to happen, and better if she had him at her side. 

Reaching out, she took his hand. His eyes caught on hers as they faced each other. “Still glad we came, Slayer?”

“Definitely.” She smiled a little, watching the reddish highlights touch the cerulean of his gaze. The way the faint ocher glow glinted over the planes of his cheekbones, bringing his flesh into sharp relief. He was so unbelievably gorgeous. The sculpting of him, the carven beauty of his features. The way his lips quirked, watching her, the way his eyes studied her, about nineteen thoughts and expressions passing through in maybe two seconds. The way his nostrils flared a little, here and there, every second, as he parsed the air around them, seeking without thought for threat, for cue… and to read her. The way he swallowed every time she said something that caught him just right, like she had his demon’s heart and human soul both held in her hand and at her mercy. And the way, always, that he looked at her, like she held the answer to everything, just by being _her_. 

/I still don’t understand it, the way you look at me./

“Buffy,” he murmured softly, and lifted a hand to cup her cheek. Which was when she realized that he had been looking her over in basically the same way, while the sun went down. So she supposed she wasn’t all that surprised when he kissed her. Or that they almost missed it when the bound-together moon-and-sun of Hell-A slowly lowered, as one. When the reddish light altered; turning blood-colored, like a pool of gore on the thick, reluctant, steaming tide. 

Then the light went out, like it had been extinguished in the waters. Inky darkness spread over the sea. And Spike lifted his head a breath from hers, gave a little nod up at the sky, at the blanketing darkness. “Too bad there’re no stars, yeah?”

Buffy fumbled for his hand and drew in deep of the somewhat cooler air that was dimensional evening. She had just watched the sun go down over the ocean with her William. 

Chalk it up to another one of those weird ways that hell was actually kind of heaven for them.

When they made it back to the Hyperion that night, it was in one of those silences that had not needed words.

***

“Do you think… the sun-moon thing here is… kinda symbolic, somehow?”

“Hmm?” Spike roused slightly under her in their dusty, musty new digs. Here in the unrelieved gray of the place, in the rare night of Hell-A and with only the faint, flickering glow of the one little candle he’d scrounged for light, it felt a little like his crypt. It made her feel almost like they were back in time; a time that had never been for them, but should have. “What’s that, pet?”

She shifted her cheek against his bare chest, trailed her fingers over the fading scars; marks of his time with The First, of his new tortures here… and that one weird one over his heart. She’d have to ask him about that one someday. It seemed dangerously close to a staking. Sounded like a bad story right now, and she didn’t want any bad stories. She just wanted him, like this. In the quiet. No battles. /Just us./ “I dunno. Maybe I’m not making any sense. You’re the poet, not me…”

He huffed witheringly, the sound echoing in his chest and throat. She ignored him. “It’s just… watching the sunset, I was thinking. Back home, you kind of… chased me. Like the moon. And sometimes we met. And sometimes I was in the day, and sometimes you were there with me, on the edges… but I wouldn’t ever let myself be with you in the night. Not really. But stars… Stars belong in the night, too; or something, so… And the moon… changes all the time. To reflect the sun, be whatever the world needs…”

“Buffy…”

It was like wrestling with the imagery of a Slayer dream. And it felt equally imperative, somehow. “But here, you can be in the day with me, because you… did the thing. And I can be in the night with you, sometimes, because the sun and the moon… They’re joined. They’re linked. Forever. And it’s almost like… this was our place. To become linked together.” A vague disquiet shivered over her. “Except the moon doesn’t change here. It’s… frozen. And the sun doesn’t burn you, but… it also isn’t… right. And there aren’t any stars in the night.” She shook herself, feeling kind of stupid. “And I don’t know what I’m saying.”

Spike slid out from under her a little to prop himself up on his elbow, peered at her in the dark. “You’re not a bad poet yourself, pet.” He lifted a hand, trailed his fingers over her lips, looking slightly awed in the faint candlelight.

“I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.” She felt incredibly confused… like she was reaching for something that kept slipping from her fingers before she could grab onto it.

“I do,” he whispered, and pulled her head down till his lips whispered over hers. “I’ll write it for us.”

She closed her eyes. “Will you?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Maybe I’ll even let you read it, someday, if I can get it right.”

“Okay,” she whispered back, and let him quiet her mind with his mouth.

***

Angel convalesced swiftly, and spent a lot of time out in the denuded garden of the Hyperion in silent company with Groo, murmuring sweet nothings to his dragon and more or less avoiding Buffy and Spike until he could start taking to short scouting flights again. Connor also avoided them, perhaps sensing the way the wind was blowing, though he seemed more confused than anything by the change in his father’s attitude. It was also possible that this lack of engagement with them had as much to do with the fact that he was spending long hours out looking for his girlfriend. Gwen seemed thoroughly unsettled by life during peacetime, and was never around anymore; though Buffy thought the girl’s new peripatetic lifestyle had as much to do with her obvious discomfort with Betta George’s continued presence as anything. 

Buffy and Spike did their best to ignore the tension and just went on helping the refugees to resettle, running around in the Cougar whenever possible—she even learned to siphon gas—and with Groo whenever necessary. They met up with a very overwhelmed Kate Lockley down at Clover Park and helped her to redistribute the survivors jammed cheek-by-jowl down there, moving as many people as possible—including, apparently, Connor’s adoptive parents—up toward the Silver Lake area and available water in order to relieve population pressures, and shuffled convalescents back and forth whenever they were healed enough to be moved. Maria helped a little with that, with her truck, though she kind of dropped off the map after the third day, having apparently found common ground with a werewolf named Jamal from the second Clover Park warehouse during the transfers. They really hit it off, and after that Maria pretty much vanished; a circumstance which would have once made Buffy cheer, to see the girl finally find some new guy to pull her interest away from mooning over Spike. Now, though, it just felt sad that so many of their Beverly Hills core group were kind of drifting apart. 

The world went on apace, and people moved on with their lives. Spike and Buffy basically did their best to keep busy while they waited for the other shoe to drop. And in a way it did, in the form of unexpected death, falling like a suspended sentence. 

Gris hadn’t made it. Unsurprising, in the end, considering the depth of her burns, but Buffy had started kind of praying she might pull through on the strength of her demon DNA or something, here in a demon dimension, the air of the place lending her strength. But finally whatever had been sustaining her gave out. Her breaths came shorter and shorter, and the smell set in. A familiar one. Putrefaction on living flesh; an odor one just really did not want to smell around a living person. Well, maybe on some demons it was normal, but Griselda Suarez Bonecrush was not one of them. 

Buffy wanted to stay away. To remain in denial… but she owed Gris more than that. Owed her sister Rinne more than that. God, just watching them… Rinne, sitting there, holding Gris’ one untouched hand in hers, head bent over it, spent of tears, just hoping, while her older sister slowly breathed her last. They’d done what they could over the last two weeks to make Gris comfortable, but in a dimension like this there was only so much you could do for a burn victim, and…

It really was a slow and horrible way to die. 

Rinne reminded Buffy way too much of Dawn, right now. The silent, anguished vigil at her sister’s bedside, the quiet pleading for Gris to please not leave her…

And it hurt, to know that another of her friends would go like this. To realize, belatedly, that Gris _was_ her friend; more so even than had been those girls who had died of their wounds when that horrible raid had gone wrong with Faith and the Potentials down in the tunnels. /Yes, I’ve seen this before, but at least that was quicker, with the internal injuries and the bomb-concussion, and…/ And Buffy had kept herself purposely emotionally distant from those girls.   
  
Gris, though…

Gris had been her right-hand woman all during her time in Beverly Hills. Gris had been the one to make the easiest transition when she had come in in the middle of a political mess; the one who had given up her crush on Spike and thrown her quiet weight wholly behind Buffy as lady of the manor. Gris had sided with her first when her secret identity had come out, and she had had Buffy’s back the most when she had fought to make the place hers. She had been the one to support all of Buffy’s ideas and to execute them; and she had been a hell of a fighter to boot. And… Buffy was just now realizing that she was really, really wrecked about this. She was realizing more and more every day here in Hell-A that her measure of humanity no longer had any damn thing to do with whether or not a person had a human soul. 

She didn’t have a definitive answer on whether demons had their own kinds of souls, or whether they only sometimes sounded like they did, or whether just some of them did, or what… but it didn’t have even a tiny ounce of bearing anymore on how she felt about the ones she’d come close to. Spike, obviously. Gris. Maria. Anya. Lorne. Clem… /God, _Clem…_ I hope you made it out okay./ 

It was their _behavior_ that was the clincher. That was what mattered, not their soul-status; just as it was all that should ever matter with humans. And why she had always treated humans as if they had greater intrinsic value, no matter their behavior, was beyond her. /Yes, my job is to protect humans, but… as if being human alone balances out the scales, opposite one demon mistake or miscalculation. I let humans—and Angel—make dozens, and everything was forgiven the instant they said ‘sorry’… but if it’s a demon… Sayonara, buddy. No more chances./ 

That had all changed for her, of course, the day Spike, under The First’s influence, had opened his shirt and looked at her miserably. _“Do it fast, okay?”_

She hadn’t been able to do it then, and she couldn’t think that way now. Probably ever again. Because yes; it was her bred-in-the-bone instinct to save and salvage humans first. It was part of how she had been made. But the shades of gray… They had long since invaded. She had lived long enough to come close to that which she fought. She had touched the other side, become intimate with it, and knew what all those girls did not, who had lived too short and too tragic lives. 

/These people; the ‘lesser’ demons? They’re not so different. And as long as they’re trying their best to get along, like the rest of us… they deserve to live without harassment. And I… am allowed to love them./

There, across the room, Gris drew one last, familiar, rattling breath. Rinne, next to her, a shaky one that was mostly sobbing, as she held the undamaged hand. 

When the exhale came, there were no more breaths. Gris’ green skin had turned a custardy-lime color under the tracery of oozing, ichor-and-black burns. And Rinne was crying. Pleading. “Gris… come back… No, come on, come back…”

Rinne, who was too much like Dawn right now, begging her big sister not to leave her, and Buffy couldn’t. 

She leaned back, knowing he would be there. He wasn’t about to avoid standing vigil while they lost one of his girls.

His arms closed around her. Tightened briefly, and he kissed her head. “She’s not in pain anymore,” he whispered, roughly.

“Yeah.” She couldn’t help the tremulous note in her throat. The way so many had gone… 

But Rinne would need Spike. “Go on.”

“You okay, luv?”

She managed a nod. “Come back to me, after.”

He took her at her word. He knew how good she was at putting up the wall, and hanging on. So his hands squeezed her shoulders once, and he was stepping around her to comfort the sister who had lived. It was something he was well-used to doing, obviously, knew the book by heart. Rinne, in shock and staring down at her sister’s body while he stood, arm over her shoulder, and talked her through it.

Buffy hugged herself to hold herself together. She could wait to fall apart until she had him back. They all had their jobs to do, here.

Everyone had their part to play.

Lorne had found his _career_, it seemed, in Hell-A. He had been dubbed the unofficial administrative leader of the troupe in peacetime and when it came to any organizing that was not directly related to war or war-prep, and they were fine leaving that overall title to him. He after all had the gift of gab and the patience for all the glad-handing that went with the job; soothing the bruised egos, smoothing the ruffled feathers, and earning every facsimile of a Sea Breeze he could manage to scrounge from the bars of the various nearby hotels as he went. “Christ knows I’d never want to do it,” Spike told Buffy earnestly one day as they sat back watching their demon friend negotiate a truce between a warring human matriarch and a cohort of Loose-Skinned demons tiffing over water-rights. “Bleedin’ latter-day Solomon over there.”

Buffy made a face. “I wouldn’t either. Battles, okay, but that? Breaking up fights over the shower schedule back home was bad enough.”

That earned her a chuckle of agreement. 

No one was surprised when, when the survivors held a loose sort of election a few ‘days’ later, Lorne was elected almost unanimously to be the mayor pro-tem of what was left of Los Angeles. No one except, perhaps, Lorne. “I thought one of you two would get it, for sure, or Angel, or even our baby boy or one of the girls. I mean, you’re the ones who've been out there doing all the rescues, leading all the charges, doing admin…”

“No, trust me. All yours, mate. Take it and welcome. And you heard Lockley.” The ex-cop had snorted distrustfully when approached with the idea of being a civic leader, muttered something about politicians being exactly the kind of person she tried to avoid, before vanishing back into her warehouse to polish her weapons. 

Buffy could get behind a woman like her.  
  
Lorne's troubled, red-rimmed eyes cut to Buffy’s, the question in them for her next. 

It took Buffy a moment to register what he was asking, but once she picked up what he was putting down she choked a little on the reconstituted orange juice she was sucking down (they’d found a lot of powdered stuff at the Biltmore bar). “Uh. God. No. Please.” She waved at him, coughing, then pushed at Spike when he made to pat her back with solicitous unhelpfulness. “Have at it.” And she tossed back the multivitamin she had scrounged, relieved not to have to think about anything but staying healthy-ish and fighting belligerent monsters. _/God,_ no! That's the best part of being here, is being _away_ from crap like that!/

“You’re sure? I mean, not that I think it wouldn’t be a lot of work, but I can at least get the convalescents out of your hair, now that we’ve got some of the medicos up there too…”

Unwilling to spare further breath in protests, she just waved weakly in a general, ‘Blessings on your adventure’ kind of way.   
  
Without further ado Lorne moved back up to Silver Lake to take up his mayoral duties, Groo following faithfully. “Until we fight together again, Champion Buffy!”  
  
"Yeah, you bet, Groo! Have fun patrolling the skies."  
  
"Indeed! We fly, Cordelia!"

A lot of the surviving army decamped too, to take up rooms in the various nearby—and somewhat more tony—hotels. Ones suffering from less overpopulation and with fewer rooms in various states of disrepair, or which did not include, for instance—as in Nina’s case—boyfriends-on-hiatus. This did relieve some of the stress of living Downtown, since if anything happened most of their people were a quick shout away… but it did have the effect of leaving them alone with Illyria, Angel, Connor, and Gwen, rattling uneasily around the place trying to avoid bumping into each other. 

They spent most of their time downstairs in their basement, Angel up in his old suite or with the dragon, Connor and Gwen in the suite they’d claimed as their own. The place seemed echoingly empty after all the hubbub of dozens of voices and the calls for aid from the injured, the frightened, the damaged. And there was the question of whether they were doing Angel more harm than good staying, and doing themselves a disservice into the bargain. 

Obviously being here was doing Illyria no good. Wesley’s ghost had shown up only once since Gunn’s attempt on Angel’s life, apparently to check in on his ex-boss. Amazingly, his visit hadn’t turned Illyria into a Fred-alike again, but it had resulted in a fairly interesting conversation between them (overheard by Buffy and Spike from the upstairs balustrade)... and, thereafter, some exceedingly unfortunate side-effects from their rapidly-degenerating Old-One-in-a-bottle.

“Christ,” Spike had exclaimed upon seeing Wes’ ghost saunter out of Angel’s room. “What the bloody hell are you doing here, Oxford? You’re gonna set her off again! We just got her put back to rights!”

“Sorry,” Wes had answered blandly. “I don’t intend to be seen. I’m leaving. I needed to speak to Angel. I’ll just be off.”

“Yes. You do that. Bloody hell, go before she…”

“Wesley. I am gratified that you’ve come. I need to speak with you.” Illyria’s voice had echoed along the old hotel hallway.

“Oh, sodding fuck.”

Wesley took the Old One's appearance with equanimity, turning toward her with his weird, ghostly glasses gleaming as if they had anything to do with reality. Buffy still couldn't figure that out at all. “Illyria. You’re looking well.”

“I am performing adequately. You look distinctly different. Why have you chosen this odd version of your form for a spectral projection?”

Wes had tilted his head slightly and removed the ghostly glasses for a moment. “It was not by choice. It was, in effect, a punishment by the Senior Partners for having attempted to double-cross them while in their employ.”

“An odd choice for chastisement.”

“Yes, well, humans have a tendency to put great store by our appearance.”

“I had noticed. I wish to speak with you privately.”

There had been not a moment’s hesitation. “Yes, of course." A quick, fleeting glance toward the couple standing at the far end of the hall, not quite passing over Buffy. He seemed nervous to even acknowledge Buffy's presence, actually, if not eager to get away. "Downstairs, then?”

“That would be acceptable.”

As the ghost and the Old one descended the long, switchback-y stair, Buffy had drawn even with Spike to lightly touch the back of his arm. Her vampire had been vibrating with tension as he watched. “What’s up with them?”

“Hell if I know.” His words had sounded bitten off with frustration.

“Well… at least she’s not… reverting or whatever.”

“Yeah. For the mo’. Give it five minutes and I’ll be down there pickin’ up the bleedin’ pieces. Damn you, Oxford…”

Illyria and the ghost had halted behind the old, polished-wood concierge desk, to hover in the doorway of Angel’s old office. Though they might have had the illusion of privacy, even Buffy could still hear most of what they were saying from up on the walkway. No doubt Spike could make out every word. “What is it you wished to say to me, Illyria?”

Illyria’s tones were fierce as she had addressed the ghost of her former caretaker. “I wish to inform you that whatever They may have told you, Wesley, you are not Theirs. The Wolf, Ram, and Hart are upstarts, and they are weak. I will not permit them to keep you. You are mine, and I will have you back from them.” 

Wesley had sounded somewhat amused, if a little touched as he’d replied. “That is highly unlikely, if flattering. My contract clearly extends well beyond death, and into several realms.” A short, pregnant pause. “And besides, I though that Spike was your pet.”

Illyria’s measured tones actually managed to reflect a slight note of impatience. “Spike belongs to the demon-slayer. He was never mine. He was only on loan to me…”

Beside Buffy, Spike had grunted, sounding surprised that the ancient demigod would admit to having been ousted by a mostly-human local. 

“…You belong to _me_, Wes, and I will not let you go. You are a mere mortal, and I have not released you from my service.”

The ghost had sobered at this. “Well, I have to admit that as servitude goes, yours would likely be a more attractive sort than the one to which I am currently bound.”

Illyria was silent for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice took on a grim cast. “I removed your reason to exist. I understand this. I begin to understand… love.”

“Illyria…”

/_God_./ The pain in his voice, even as a spirit, was agonizing to hear. 

“I seek to heal the damage I have done. First, I will learn to grieve. This is a lesson I have already begun.” Illyria’s tones turned fierce and determined. “But I do not release you to Them, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. I will find a way to remove your chains, and return you to my side. Know it will be so.”

Wesley had remained silent for a brief stretch, then, “I suppose if anyone could manage it, Illyria, it would be you. We shall see. But for now, I must go.”

“Then you must. I regret that I must permit it.”

“Farewell for now.”

“Farewell, Wes.”

The ghost had faded out.

“Well,” Spike had murmured as they’d backed away from the railing, “wasn’t that bloody interesting?”  
  
  
**TBC**   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(The song Spike sings to Buffy is "I Want You Around" by the Ramones.  
It seemed apropos.)


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, disclaimer; I do one fairly predictable thing in this chapter, though hopefully I put a little of my own spin on it. But I defy anyone who has the actual opportunity to time-skip with Buffy in evidence to NOT do that scene (or, failing that, something surrounding it) so that she finally GETS it. 
> 
> I also, one hopes, do a few fairly not-predictable things in this chapter, all leading up to/setting up for a chapter next time around which I have been DYING to post since I wrote it along about last July and which I think will be UTTERLY unpredictable by all modern standards. HEE.

Spike wasn't wrong in his dire-seeming predictions. From then on out, Illyria was on edge; which meant all of her companions were in the same boat in case their ghosty friend might pop up once more to turn her inside-out. Especially since, in lieu of going all Freddish, Illyria instead opted to start doing more time-skipping, which she hadn’t done for months now. Except, this time, she did it on a far grander scale than she had back at the Pink Palace, like she had some kind of ‘go hard or go home’ mentality happening.

It made Spike and, reportedly, Angel, incredibly glad that they’d cleared most of the extraneous personnel out of the Hyperion… and made Buffy low-key wish she and Spike could just move out too. Except, of course, that there was no way Spike would ever actually abandon what was left of his friend to go live at the Figueroa or something. /Can we talk time-distortions, and how unnerving they are when a demonic Old One starts getting the wig?/

Apparently something about this dimension was sort of loosening the binds Angel and Co. had put on Illyria to keep her from wrecking her human shell or something, or at least that was the gist Buffy got from her guy. Which, to be fair, was pretty worrying once Spike passed on said gist. The whole thing was badly freaking Spike out. He spent a lot of time lately wondering if his Smurfy pal was going to self-destruct any second, her power becoming too huge to be contained in mortal flesh or something. 

It was making him surly. 

Well, all of them were a little freaked. After all, it was kind of a thing to be just randomly walking around the hotel and find yourself in another period of your life, like you'd taken a random, un-asked-for turn into the Twilight Zone. It was happening on the regular now, though, this phenomenon that both Spike and Angel informed Buffy was ‘just a little time-displacement, no big deal’, as if that was supposed to be calming. Because it wasn’t, okay? Especially after the first time it happened without explanation and sent both her and Connor into a panic. Buffy would challenge anyone not to freak if they were just minding their own business, stalking down a corridor doing their own thing, and between one step and the next they found themselves in their childhood home petting a long-forgotten dolly and trying to get Mr. Gordo to drink nonexistent tea… and then all the sudden and even more unnerving, flashing forward (forward?) to some weird, apocalyptic future city where they were face to face with a wild-haired, tingle-inducing Slayer with a mad glint in her eye who wanted to throw down, because there could be only one, like some kind of ‘Highlander’ movie.

Coming back from that little trip, mid-tussle—that girl had been tough, and not exactly big on conversation—had left Buffy gasping, bent over one knee, and had brought Spike barreling headlong up the stairs to catch her by the shoulders, demanding to know what was wrong, why he hadn’t felt her for a minute, what the bloody hell was going on…

Which was, by the way, one indication that whatever was happening, it was way too real. You probably couldn’t feel the blood-bond across time.

Another time it happened, she’d happened to have been crossing paths with Angel in a hallway, and all the sudden she’d stumbled over some rough cobblestone in a street, with the smell of effluvium all around her, mixed with… dirty rainwater? /Ugh!/ And Angel was gone from her side. While she was still looking around for him a pub door creaked open across from her to dash light across the wet cobbles--Buffy could tell it was a pub by the overwhelming noise and stale beer smell--and a woman was thrown out onto the street, right into the nastiness, and...   
  
No, okay, that was a girl. Way too young to be called a woman. She was _maybe_ fifteen? More like fourteen? Hard to tell in the low lamplight, and with the 'could call it makeup if you were gracious' thing happening. Anyway, she was in a seriously way-too-low-cut period dress that had just gotten even more stained than it already was, landing in that puddle of (don't ask, don't want to know).   
  
Then a broad-shouldered man was tossed out right behind her, wearing clothes right out of a movie. Knee socks and everything. It was notable that the man didn’t leap up to help the girl off the gross ground as the proprietor shouted out the door at them; just kept his face down in the nasty-ass street. 

_“Teigh amagh,”*_ the… tavernkeeper? shouted out of the door, “‘less ye feel th’ back o’ me han’! Makin’ free w’ th’ lass is one thing, an’ ye paid good coin fra the privilege, but this isn’ a kittle hoos! Tek ye off ta th’ brothel, _meisce,*_ or find an alley when ye’re about ta close th’ deal!”

There was something about the guy on the ground; long, dark, wavy hair coming loose from a tied ribbon-deal, and the way he moved, that…

/No./ No way that was… Angel.

Or, she supposed… maybe Liam?

Honestly, she really hoped not, because if so, then she was about to get even more nauseous than the general scent of the place was trying to make her, but…

Then the scene wavered, and she was in some sort of alley—one that smelled, if possible, even worse than the street had smelled—and Angel was beside her again, face tight, totally in his normal clothes, and had she imagined that…

Before she could ask, he’d grabbed her arm unceremoniously. “Let’s get out of here, Buffy. This isn’t something you need to see. _Any_ of it.”

She’d learned by now how this worked. Clearly she was on _his_ ride this time; just a nice little passenger on the Angel train. “Is this your time? Liam’s time?”

If possible, his expression had gone even more sour. “I don’t wanna talk about it.” 

Well, she hadn’t really wanted to be jerked around by her arm, so she tugged it out of his grasp.

“Fine.” Glaring truculently around him, he’d made for the mouth of the alley, glanced around him like a hunted thing, then darted for the open street, clearly unwilling to see what they were about to be shown next. 

With a sigh, she’d followed, if only because getting lost in some weird, dirty, ancient Irish street with nonexistent plumbing was so not in her game plan for the day.

Lucky for him, they had made another time-jump before she got to see any more of his past history; this time into, maybe, the future?

Bodies lay all around them. Human, demon… A lot of the bodies were female, and carrying weapons. 

Slayers.

Angel had winced. Hard. “No! Wes said… He said this would only happen if I Shanshu’d. But I don’t want _this!_ I don’t _want_ what he showed me!”

Buffy couldn’t blame him, as she stared around them at the awful carnage. So many dead, a lot of them her sisters. /Why… Why would the PTBs _want_ this?/ 

No. Something else must be driving this future. “This can’t be what will happen if you Shanshu, Angel,” she told him quietly, and watched him hunch, face buried in his hands and shoulders shaking. “If that’s a reward for doing the right thing, this must just be a connected stop on the road. One of those things that happens for some other reason." /It better be, if my Slayers have to die for it! We _work_ for the Powers!/ "It _can’t_ be a part of it. We all know how prophecies can be interpreted in weird ways, and it just doesn’t make sense for the Powers to want something like this!” It shuddered in her, the smell of blood everywhere. Demon blood, human blood… And the incredible smell of magick. Magick, everywhere. The shimmer of it lay over everything. “Something terrible happened here. Something that caused all this carnage. All these people; these Slayers and demons… they all died for something important, but there’s no reason it’s all on you." She felt the surge of certainty as she spoke the words. "Whatever this is about, nothing says you are responsible for it. And you stopping whatever it is, or helping to stop it… It might be the reason you finally get your reward.” /And maybe the reason there’s only one Slayer left, in my future? Could that be something the Powers want? To... rectify my mistake, maybe?/   
  
/All those girls. What if it was... wrong?/

Her mind shuddered away from the thought as Angel closed his eyes. “If it ends like this, I don’t want it.” His voice was ragged with pain.

And then as suddenly as it had come upon them, the godawful vision, or the travel, whatever it was, faded back to the present.

That little experience taught Buffy quite a few things about her ex. For one thing, the future was a going to be a hell of a bumpy road for Angel. For another, that Shanshu thing was in no way a straightforward ‘keep doing the right thing and you’ll get to be a real boy’ reward system. The PTBs were really enjoying dragging this thing out and kicking him around. The bastards. 

For a third, they would always be connected, dammit. Him, his soul, the Slayer line… Something about Angel would always be caught up in what she had to do, for better or worse. Which was… frustrating. And exhausting. She didn’t want to stay tangled up in the fight for Angel’s soul, and the tussle with Angelus. It was tiring.

And, for a fourth… Whoever Angel was now, Liam, at least in the past, hadn’t exactly been the most likable guy on the planet, which might have something to do with all the dicking around he was getting now. Buffy might not necessarily think it was entirely fair to punish the soul stuck hanging on for the ride for all the things they had done as Angelus… But maybe… he had his own stuff to pay for, since it looked like he had spent a hell of a lot of time pre-demon in seedy bars where it wasn’t unusual to bring underage prostitutes right inside. The type of places where as long as you didn’t have actual sex with them right on top of the bar, that was just fine with everyone. Which, just, ew.

That girl had been younger than Dawn had been when she’d first come into existence. And granted Buffy hadn’t been able to really make out how old Liam had been, but no way he had been the same age. Not that the bartender or whatever had seemed all that upset about that part, which kind of made one think that it wasn’t exactly an oddball thing in that time period for guys to just… make, um, _use_ of girls that young, back then, and think nothing of it, which…

Just, really; ugh. 

She knew it was a different time and everything, but some things were just not alright. She remembered Spike once saying to her, trying to get her to denounce him, _“You wanna know what I’ve done to girls Dawn’s age?” _

But he’d been a fledgling vampire by then—essentially a crazed, infant id—and judging by the stuff he’d said, probably most of the things he’d done had been about either violence, or done in the frenzy of feeding, rather than out of some sort of sick need to torment people. Buffy also got the idea that a lot of the things Spike had done, at least early on, had been at Angelus’ instigation, to impress his grandsire. 

Liam… hadn’t been a demon then, but an adult human guy. And hadn’t been trying to impress a sire. Maybe trying to piss off a parent or something dumb like that, but that was no excuse.

Hard things to think about. Jeez, no wonder Angel had tried so hard to get her away from there; to get her away from seeing it. He knew they were over for sure now, but obviously he still wanted to keep what little was left of his image intact in her eyes; and that image was… well… _Angel_. Not…

/But if Liam was already kind of a dick who didn’t mind hurting women and young girls and didn’t care about their feelings, how hard did Angelus have to work, really, to get that part of you to like the torturing and raping and… stuff?/

Her mind abruptly shied away from that thought, because it was too close to taboo realizations, like that maybe without the curse Angel and Angelus really might not be a whole heck of a lot different. That sans curse, Angel and his dark, soulless side might even be just as homogenous as Spike was, which was…

/Spike could still _do_ all those things he used to. The soul doesn't stop him. He’d just feel awful about it. But he doesn’t _want_ to, does he?/

She knew he didn’t. Well, not the truly horrible things. She thought he probably wouldn’t mind stealing stuff, provided it wouldn’t break them up. In fact, she was pretty sure he’d still get off on it. There were a lot of things, she knew, that her guy still thought were no-nos for stupid reasons; things he had leapt to do the minute he was ‘freed’ by his demon as a part of his overall becoming. That walking the line between being his true self and being with her would always be a constant struggle for him, and for her, if they ever got back home, because his nature simply didn’t require him to feel bad about a lot of those societal rules as long as—now, with the soul—no one really got hurt in the long run. And, they would negotiate all of that later, if they needed to. But… /Does… Does Angel… Liam… also _want_ to? Does he hate himself and think he deserves to be punished all the time because he still _wants_ to?/ That thought had honestly never occurred to her before now. /Is that why he’s always Mr. ‘I don’t deserve happiness, I’m not good enough, I’ll never be good enough’?/ Was that why all the horrible visions, and the whole, driven need to keep helping the helpless like he had to prove something, every second? /God, was that the reason you never let yourself come back to me?/

Like he was poison and could never make her happy. Like he might hurt her again just by being with her. Because deep inside he knew he was still the same guy who liked things that he thought were too dark for her. Things like the art of pain and stalking, and… /Oh God. Is that why you won’t quit calling him ‘Liam’, Spike?/

/Is the Angel I know really just a curse over the top of a guy who’s not much different than Angelus? Is the curse the same as the chip, really, and it was who was underneath, all the time, that mattered?/

Dawn had even said it; over and over again. ‘Soul, chip, same diff.’ And Buff had completely discounted her sister’s insight, blown her off. But… /Holy crap… She was probably right./ Because if Angelus had been chipped...  
  
/What a whole different goddamn ballgame that would have been, and why the hell didn't I ever ask myself why I trusted Spike so damn much with his, when any other vamp with one, I'd've staked 'em on sight? God, if it was Angelus.../ 

Well, to be fair, he'd have pretended to be puppydog Angel and found a way to kill them all. But if not... she would have known better than to grant that asshole asylum, at least. /Because I would have known it was life or death right then and there. God; I knew all along that Spike was different, whether I wanted to admit it or not, didn't I?/   
  
There was one way, of course, in which the soul and the chip were different, and that was the remorse aspect. But when the soul wasn't a curse, but sought freely... /No wonder Spike's less tormented by his./ Which was probably why he was less useful to all these chess-playing Powers. And Buffy would take it. /I want him all to myself. My Champion. I don't want to share him with You. He got it for _me,_ not to be stuck playing Your stupid game. He's _mine!_/   
  
And anyway, in the end it didn't matter the whole hell of a lot. Because the man and demon underneath were both already better. /Not that I didn't already know that, deep inside./   
  
Still. What a thing to realize, in retrospect.

***

The most interesting time-skip of all, though, occurred in Spike’s presence. Or, at least, it was the most interesting from Buffy’s perspective, since it did a very great deal to inform her as regards to certain things about her guy’s human life that were just… 

Well. Interesting. In the heartbreakingly melting kind of way. 

Spike had just exited Illyria’s room when it happened, having just checked in on her. He came to meet Buffy by the railing that overlooked the lobby, greeted her with a little, silent nod.   
  
“How is she?”

“About the same. Asked me again where Wes is. Never know if she means her pet body, the real bloke, or his ghost. Christ knows I’m gonna work hard as I can to keep redirecting her back toward the last two, even if it hurts her. If she goes gallivanting off after that bloody corpse and brings it here, at this bleedin’ point…”

Buffy winced at the thought. The thing had thoroughly dried out before they'd left Beverly Hills, sure, but it still hadn’t smelled all that great. She doubted it had gotten any better in the last couple of weeks. They were all a lot happier that it had been left behind to stink up the Pink Palace. “Do you really think she…”

_Blink_. “Ah, William! Favor us with your opinion. What do you make of this rash of disappearances sweeping through our town? Animals, or thieves?”

Buffy stared around her, jolted by the abrupt shift. She was never going to get used to that. She barely had a chance to get a glimpse of her surroundings, though—she managed maybe a brief impression of rich furniture, wainscoting, the smell of beeswax and fancy, just really nice colognes, and something that smelled slightly of BO and tobacco—before Spike had her arm and was dragging at her. Actually _d__ragging_ her away from the speaker (a kind of a jerk-sounding, tall guy with an honestly _huge_, sandy-blond mustache, in a really old-fashioned suit). Her vampire was, it must be said, literally snarling, he was muttering so ferociously under his breath. _“Fuck_ no; _goddammit_ Illyria, this is the bloody _end_, you sodding _bitch…”_

“Spike, what…” 

“We’re getting the _fuck_ out of here, Buffy.”

“But, what…” She pulled away from him, out of his grip. He was going to leave bruises. “Dammit, Spike, tell me…” And then, belatedly, she replayed the words the man had spoken in that stuffy, aristocratic, English accent. _‘Ah, William,’_ he had said, and /_Oh_/. “This is _your_ past.”

“Buffy…” He was talking through his teeth now, rigid, every inch of him vibrating with the need to be gone. 

God; his past really, really bothered him, didn’t it? “Spike,” she whispered, catching his hands, “why don’t you want me to see?”

His eyes had closed, his cut-glass cheekbones taut and drawn with pain. _“I_ don’t want to bloody see it again. And I for damn sure don’t want you to know what a bleedin’ tosser I was.”

She sighed. “I think we’re kind of stuck here till the ride’s over. And I don’t know if you know this, but there’s nothing about you that I don’t love.”

A low, contemptuous snort exited him, heavy with disbelief. “You say that now, pet, but once you really know…”

She bit her lip. She really wanted to know. But if it would destroy him, destroy _them_… “I’ll walk away,” she told him softly, and squeezed his hands. “But I really want to _know_ you.”

He remained still. Rigid and unbreathing. And his eyes opened, once, fierce on hers. “Go, if you’re gonna. I won’t watch it again.”

He meant it. His eyes were pained, clouded, but clear enough for her to see that he would forgive her for knowing. So she turned back, unable to restrain herself anymore in her desperate curiosity, her terrible need to know more of the man with whom she was still just barely getting acquainted. The version of William who had lain carefully hidden behind Spike all these years; asleep and then fiercely protected until he had been forcibly roused to come to know her out of a desperate need to court a mostly-human woman who might never look at him.

Spike stayed behind, unmoving as she stepped away a little. She felt a little like a traitor as she turned back; just in time to see man with the horrible mustache holding a slip of what looked like thick, artisan paper torn from some sort of notebook. Blond dude was smirking in a horrible, bully-ish way as he lifted the scrap. 

Buffy circled around, drawing close enough to recognize Spike’s unchanged, flowing handwriting. And, as the smirky read from it, too loudly, in amused and disdainful tones... /Oh./   
  
She knew those lines. They were read this time in a mocking cadence, without the loving turn of phrase they had been given that evening over four months ago in the slam poetry bar in LA when she had first been reunited with her guy. But she knew them. 

“…‘My heart expands. 'Tis grown a bulge in it, inspired by your beauty, effulgent.’” 

Then, to Buffy’s genuine horror, he chuckled cruelly. _“Effulgent?”_

At which point, they all laughed, just as mercilessly.

/Wow, I guess jock bullying really was a thing no matter what the time period? God, no wonder he never wants to show his poetry to anyone!/ And no wonder it had been such a big deal for him to read this one out loud, finally, that he had chosen to do it on what might have been the last night of his existence. 

She found herself unbelievably glad it had gotten a good reception at that bar, because in his own time...

“And that's actually one of his better compositions,” one of the jerks was chiming in.

“Have you heard? They call him William the Bloody because of his bloody awful poetry!”

/_Ohhh_… Wait, hold up!/ Some things were starting to make some serious sense, in the whole ‘reclaiming’ kind of way, and for real? Buffy was starting to get a little upset. /Have you heard the one he wrote for _me?_/ God, no wonder her guy had a complex about the whole thing, thought he was so bad. /No wonder he didn’t write any for a hundred years!/ But, like… it was such a loss, because had they ever even heard him _talk?_

She froze when she heard the next snide, chortled comment. “It suits him. I'd rather have a railroad spike through my head than listen to that awful stuff!”

/_Oh_. Oh God, you _bastards_./ 

There was no doubt in her mind that these guys were the ‘early victims’ in Spike’s otherwise completely off-base Council bio.

Footsteps echoed. Heeled ones. Buffy’s head jerked up, away from the dick guys, and… /No _way_./ Was that that Halfrek bitch?

It was! Wearing a period dress and walking away with a disdainful expression, but that was definitely her. And… wait. Was she a demon back then? Did Sp… William _know_ her? Did he _know_ she was a demon? 

Well, probably not, depending on whether he was still alive back then… but judging by the way Spike was acting, this was pre-siring.

It was enough to have her hustling back to where he stood, frozen a little ways off down in some side room. He was easy enough to locate, between the bond and the full-body tingles that didn't vanish, apparently, when you time-traveled together. “Spike,” she whispered, speaking to his taut, turned back, “was she… I mean, back then, was she…”

“No doubt,” he muttered harshly. “Bitch was probably on a job.”

Well, that answered the question about whether he’d known her. “You didn’t act like you thought she was a bitch when she showed up at the house to make my birthday a smash hit.”

“Yeah, well…” he answered sourly, “a hundred and twenty years and two other great loves takes a little of the sting out of being jilted.”

/Wait, what?/ Buffy stared at him, read the immense bitterness written on his face, in his eyes. /Ohh, shit./ Was this… Was Halfrek the woman Spi… William was in love with, back then? 

No need to ask to get confirmation, by the look on his face, the way he was holding himself. /Oh damn, Spike, do you ever know how to pick ‘em, you dope./ He was like freaking Xander; demon-dar even when he’d been human, and, just… /God, you idiot; you’re almost as bad as I am when it comes to having a type./ “You and Xander have a lot more in common than you pretend to.” /And so do we, for the record; supposedly innocent humans, hitting on demons, drawn to the dangerous dark side, yadda. Who knew?/

Her observation earned her a jaundiced look. “Bite your bloody tongue, Buffy.”

She sighed, aware he was raw. “What… What happened?”  
  
He huffed, arms crossed. Pulled out a cigarette and lit up, clearly unconcerned with the impact their presence might have made in the past as far as air-pollution went. “Bitch rejected me and went on her merry way. I ran out and got myself dead within the hour.”

“She…” /Oh./ Buffy turned to follow the vanishing demon-woman with her eyes. “Was that what all that unspoken stuff was about back there at the house when she was there cursing us all?”

“Might have been.” Spike was sure being Mr. Talkative right now. Not that she blamed him, with the way the bastard jocks back there were acting like a little fraternity of dicks.

She watched as her guy corked his mouth with his cigarette and ceased all conversation. Her heart bled for him, knowing just exactly how squishy he was underneath the tough exterior. She felt like she had just gotten a key to him; to why he had constructed such a tough-guy shell in the first damn place; even before Angelus… “Wait. And you got sired right after this?”

A truculent grunt.

Buffy whirled to head after the demon. She wasn’t entirely sure what she meant to do, but a morbid curiosity raged through her. She was halted by a grip like steel on her arm. “Mess with it, Buffy, and I never exist.”

It roiled through her. “Yeah. I… I know, but…”

“And I dunno how much we’re really here, but it must be enough, since I don’t see myself wandering about, and the last one had you fightin’ some future Slayer bint. But if we change time, or my _family_ feels a Slayer about…”

That hadn’t exactly occurred to her, either; especially since, when she went back alongside Angel, Liam had been there. But maybe... that was a function of distance, because they had landed across the street from the pub or whatever, while she and Spike had only been a few feet from the scene of the crime? Or…

Or maybe there just wasn’t enough left of the original Liam in Angel for the vision to consider him ‘present’ in that moment. 

Either way… “I just…” She closed her eyes. Covered his hand on her arm. “Let me see what she says to you. Then I’ll know if I should be sad she got vaporized or not. I always felt a little bad about what happened to her after Anya…”

“Couldn’t’ve happened to a nicer bitch,” Spike answered grimly, but he let her go. “You go on, Buffy. I’m staying right the fuck here.” He frowned fitfully. “Actually, I might head out to the bloody garden. Don’t want to be anywhere near any of these sodding pricks. There was a reason I earned my name with the lot.”

/Right. Railroad spikes. Oh, man…/ Once upon a time that description of torture had horrified her. Now, she really understood. Actually, she kind of wanted to participate. /The bastards./ 

Pulling his head down firmly, she kissed him, swift and hard… Did not acknowledge his surprise as she headed out in the direction into which her quarry had vanished. And arrived in time to find her sitting on a low, setee-style sofa, all prim and proper, with a young man who looked entirely like Spike and yet completely not, sitting next to her, though with a totally appropriate foot and a half or something of space between them. 

Seeing him was like being punched right through the chest.   
  
It was all very bizarre, catching this first glimpse of William as a human. First off, of course, no tinglies, which was just goddamned bizarre. Strangely, he looked almost as pale, which made Buffy wonder vaguely if he was sick in some way. Otherwise... Same height, same build, but he seemed somehow less… Well, it was hard to tell with the way the khaki suit coat and trousers fit him, but he definitely didn’t seem as… athletic, just in the way he moved. Also, it was odd as hell to see him wearing such a high, starched-looking white collar, when Spike always seemed to go around wearing either low-necked tees or lazy-collared shirts all half-unbuttoned to show off his collarbones (which, by the way, yum). 

William did have very recognizable loose curls, if parted, oddly enough, on the left. They were, however, sort of a light honey-brown—and was he wearing _glasses?_

He looked shy. Actually shy. And, like…. bookish. Kind of… nerdy, in that way that, when she had been younger, she would have totally ignored him. In that way that, later on, when she’d become ‘she who picks up strays’, she would have completely taken him under her wing, like a kind of male Willow, and at the same time probably totally discounted him until she realized, like, ten years later that she’d completely fallen for him without realizing it. Which, you know, wasn’t all that different than… /Just, jeez./ 

And _god_, he looked _so_ earnest. So sincere and _open_. So utterly unguarded that it terrified her. Like, yeah; he was sometimes almost completely unguarded with her, now, here… but that was in a few scattered, very special moments, and it took, like, serious work to get him there. He had to basically consciously let go of all his century’s worth of armor and the protection of a fierce, savior of a demonside to get down to what she saw right now; in this moment. To get to _this_ guy.

This was the William at the totally gentle, sweet center of Spike, and, /Oh./

/You—the demon and William together—built Spike to protect this guy./

She got it now. Like, really _got_ it. That William—this William—really had never gone anywhere. And that some of the stuff that had hurt him had maybe happened before even Angelus. /Though probably that hadn’t exactly been helpful or anything./

She kind of really just wanted to go over there right now, punch Halfrek in the face, tell the demon-bitch to leave her guy alone, grab William up, tell him he was wonderful and so were his poems and not to listen to anyone, drag him off away from all these awful people and… /And ruin everything. God, Spike’s right. This is playing with fire./

She doubled up her fists. Dug her nails into her palms. /I should leave. I should…/ 

She half hadn’t expected to see him, was the thing. But it seemed that the real versions of people from whatever time appeared whenever the out-of-time versions weren’t in the same room, or not in close enough proximity—or too dead inside? The latter theory was still totally a contender, though no way to prove it—and, just… this whole thing was really weird and she wasn’t going to try to figure it out, because time-paradoxes were for people like Willow and that girl Fred, when she was alive, and Buffy was so not the nerd type. 

“Cecily?” the brunet Spike-alike interjected softly, trying to get Halfrek’s attention, and wow, he sounded even more stuffy than Giles. And really, really… What was the word? Retiring. Almost like he was afraid someone would actually hear him if he spoke up. Heck, his entire body language was that of someone who was almost scared he would be noticed if he moved too much, and woah, this was just so the antithesis of her confident Spike that it was really just super weird to watch. Was it the demon that had made her guy the roaring, raucous creature that he was, or had it been some kind of protest to his treatment here? Or was it a combination of both, as that entity set him free somehow, letting loose this shy, beaten-down man’s need to be seen, finally, and setting his feet on the road of ferocious self-reclamation? It would make sense, considering the way getting his soul back had... weirdly stilled and quietened him until she'd reawoken the demon. He was only ever Mr. Jittery anymore when he was prepped for battle, way anxious, or majorly horny.   
  
/It sure didn't make him this shy and uncertain, though. Well, about anything but the whole bathroom thing, which, you know, is understandable./

Also, on a completely unrelated note… ‘Cecily’?

‘Cecily’ was acting like a complete bitch. She totally sighed when Sp… William spoke, like he was tiring her out just by existing. “Oh. Leave me alone.”

Buffy kind of wanted to slap her. /You’re lucky you’re already dead, you cow./

William seemed unfazed by the bitchiness, and waved off the sentiment as some sort of frustration with the douchey guys they had just left. “Oh, they're vulgarians. They're not like you and I.”

/Oh, William… She doesn’t want to have anything in common with you…/ Everything about Halfrek’s body language was resistant, unwelcoming. How someone as good at reading people as William was could have missed it was…

/Oh./ It was the _demon_ who was good at reading people. Not William.

Maybe that was why the poetry had gotten better with time. Maybe that, and maybe just years of experience, but it was clear just from the hopeful way that past-William kept on glowing at this ‘Cecily’ character that he had no idea at all that she was trying to put him off. He was getting nothing from her. 

Buffy had seen this kind of thing before, in high school. Her guy was about to get his soul crushed.

She almost didn’t want to watch, except… she couldn’t look away. It was like a car crash. And she knew… she had to see this, to _know_ him.

This, and Drusilla, had been the turning point of his existence, till he had met her.

“You and I?” ‘Cecily’ demanded, witheringly, and paused for a moment, as if gathering her breath and her patience. “I'm going to ask you a very personal question, and I demand an honest answer. Do you understand?”

William nodded like an eager puppy, all earnest hopefulness. 

/Oh God./ The bitch’s voice was so not promising, how was he not getting this? Her entire posture was closed, her expression the very definition of resting bitch-face; oh man, this was going to be awful…

“Your poetry. It's... They're... not written about me, are they?”

Buffy held her breath.

The sweet man hedged, a blush growing on his slightly peaked cheeks. “They're about how I feel.”

/Eee. Just get up and leave, William, while you still have your dignity intact. This is so not going to happen for you. This girl is worse than Cordelia ever was, oh my God, just go…/ The demon bitch was about to rip him to shreds.

“Yes, but are they about me?”

She saw it coming. In the way he gathered his breath. The way he started to glow. Saw the train-wreck waiting to happen. Couldn’t look away, even though everything in her wanted her to tear her gaze away, leave and let her own future William keep some of his self-respect intact in her eyes… Because she knew that look in his fathomless blue gaze. Knew it very well, and from personal experience. And for the record, it was super weird to see it pointed at someone not-her. 

She had seen it, each time he had looked desperately, hopefully into hers. Except this first time, when he looked at ‘Cecily’, there was no experience of cruel, destructive, crushing rejection there. He had never yet been destroyed. He was new, this William. Unbroken, unmarred. And she heard herself screaming, in her head, at Halfrek. /Don’t do it! Please, don’t crush his soul… It’s such a beautiful one!/ Her nails, digging into her palms, drew blood, to keep herself from leaping in to stop it. 

Because if she did, she would end everything. 

She would lose her Spike. 

This was the making of him. But to have him, the man she loved, she had to witness the breaking of the man he had been.

Beaming, effulgent, William looked directly into the vengeance-demon’s eyes. “Every syllable,” he declared. And his heart was in his throat as he said it.

/Oh no, no…/

Demon-bitch affected a look of shocked, pained disgust. “Oh, God!”

And William—the sweet, unassuming lad that he had been—hastened to reassure the bitch that everything was alright… because he still had the wrong idea. “Oh, I know... It's sudden and... please, if they're no good, they're only words but... the feeling behind them...” A deep breath.

/No, don’t say it./

“I love you, Cecily.”

It was, very clearly, the first time he’d bared his soul like that to a woman who wasn’t going to say it back. 

Buffy desperately needed to turn away. To close her eyes against the response that was surely going to come, so that she wouldn’t have to see what it would do to him; the scars that it would cause, the first time he was wrecked against the sharp rocks of love’s denial. /God, I do know you now. And I wish I’d never…/

“Please stop!”

Yes, he needed to stop. Halfrek, Cecily; whatever her name was was giving him every chance, actually, before she had to crush him. But like an idiot—like Love’s Bitch—he wasn’t getting the hint. Buffy had to admit, the demon-woman was trying to give him an out, and maybe she couldn’t blame the bitch for finally losing her patience. But still…

This was William, and he had never, ever known when to stop pushing when it came to love. That was something that both he and his eventual demon had had very much in common. Hell, this is probably where his idiotic, intractable, beautiful madman of a demon had _learned_ it. “I know I'm a bad poet, but I'm a good man. And all I ask is that... that you try to _see_ me…”

/Oh, ouch./ God, that one hit home. Because he always had been a good man, underneath… and that was all he had ever wanted from her, too. From Buffy. That she try to _see_ him. And she had never tried—had in fact tried to do the exact opposite—until it was too late.

‘Cecily’ had had enough. “I _do_ see you. That's the problem. You're nothing to me, William. You're beneath me.”

/‘Beneath’… Oh, God./ The echo almost brought Buffy to her knees. Of all things for the bitch to say to him, to drive him out and to his death…

/No. Of all things for _me _to say to him, later, to drive him to come at me with a gun./

And yet… he hadn’t used it. /Instead he put it away and… _Comforted_ me. Listened when I talked about Mom being sick, because he understood that; even before he knew what was going on…/ 

/God, Spike, if you’d shot me that night I would totally get why./ Not that she had known, or meant to crush him with the agony of an ancient wounding. They had been speaking alternate languages; she, that of war, he, a kind of peace she hadn't been able to read, yet.

Not for years, and then through the numb fog begun then; of too much lost.

William was fleeing; in his own numb fog, past her and out into the night. The shock of his shoulder crashing past hers, too flustered even at the height of his mannerly Victorian existence to apologize for colliding with a woman, the feel of his body a strange, less-vivid refection of the be-demoned being he would become as he dashed out to find his fate at the fangs of mad Drusilla. To become the larger-than-life person she would despise and deny and eventually love. Because a vengeance demon had been driven, finally, to explain in cruel and certain terms to a lovestruck human that he was no match for her. And William would flee, for years, to be buffeted, first here, then abused by Angelus, and then…

/Then by me./ And oh, God, she had to go find Spike.

She rushed through the house, seeking the back garden, dodging between very proper ladies with serious perfume fixations, and overdressed men in whatever those ties were called back then, all of them with really excessive mustaches and smelling of expensive tobacco and uber-rich alcohols, and around some really fantastic furniture that would definitely have caught her attention at any other time, but she just didn’t have the patience right now for anything but finding her Spike.

Finding William.

She never did, of course, before the little adventure through time had ended, and she staggered right into him against the stone railing above the lobby of the Hyperion, eyes wide and brimming with the vestiges of pained tears. And found him, stony of gaze and unwilling to discuss the matter when he caught her, mouth a firm slash and cheeks pale as icebergs. “Spike, I’m so…”

“No. We’re not gonna talk about this.”

He never let her apologize, either. The closest she ever got was about three days later when, laying with him on their couch downstairs after an hour or so spent listening to her restlessness and feeling her anxiety, her constipated emotional tension, he sighed heavily and muttered an answer into the dark, to her unspoken question. “You didn’t know.”

She didn’t need to ask what he was talking about. “That doesn’t make it any better.” 

“Yeah, well.” His arms around her tensed a little in response, then softened. “Both of ‘em were a long bloody time ago. And it wasn't like I was makin' it easy, eggin' you on like that. Leave it be."

True. But still, talk about bad choice of words. “I could kill my tongue.”

That earned her a chuckle. “You do that, and it’d be a sad day for a lot of parts of me, luv.”

And, well… that was a hint in more ways than one, when it came to ways she might apologize. If he didn’t want to talk about it… maybe she could employ her mouth in another fashion to the benefit of the relationship.

So, she slid south. And Spike…

Well, Spike seemed perfectly happy with the quality and duration of her apology. She made it last for a very long time, after all. And repeated herself a lot. Basically till he pulled her up by her hair and growled, “Christ, leave off, woman! You’re gonna kill me! You’re bloody forgiven!”

She grinned at him, red-mouthed and a little sore but pleased, and propped herself up on his belly, chin on her folded hands. “Are you actually telling me to _stop_ with the BJs?”

He rolled his eyes and grumbled something incomprehensible. 

“I’m sorry, I missed that.”

“I said, a bloke can only take so much, you tireless bint.”

“Huh. Well, then... I’ll pick up where I left off tomorrow…”

That sally earned her another growl as he rolled over on top of her, burying her in the couch cushions. “You’re a bleedin’ menace.”

“You love me.” She frowned. “For some reason.”

“Shut it, Buffy.” And he kissed her within an inch of her life, and proceeded to remind her of exactly why he did; and how.

That wasn’t the end of their time-travel adventures. Apparently Connor had one as well, though he refused to discuss it with anyone. The only hint he gave to anybody about the nature of his little trip was to mutter something in everyone’s hearing as he clumped back upstairs to hide; something about how ‘no one ever needs to remember being a baby again’. And then he slammed his door and refused to come out except for food and water for days. But shortly after that he started to act a lot differently around Angel; practically looking up to him and stuff, like he was a puppy desperate for love. And Angel… 

Well, Angel ate it up. Obviously Conner had recalled something of his first year, and knew what it was like now to be loved beyond all belief by his father. Buffy caught them in conversation once or twice after that, heard snippets of things that sounded like reconciliation; things like, “…So sorry that I hated you…”

“It wasn’t your fault…” And, “Yeah, that must be… hard, for you, after everything with… Cordelia, to remember what it was like, when you were a baby, and she was…”

“It’s _impossible!_ I mean, now that I know how much she was like a mother to me, it’s like…”

“It wasn’t your fault; you know that, right? It wasn’t hers, either. She was possessed, and you were a confused kid. Jasmine used both of you…”

God. Whatever happened here between all of them sounded like it had been a real mess.

Honestly, Buffy really just didn’t want to know. She was more focused on her guy’s state of mind, and on what it all meant for their future prospects. Spike was kind of torn up about what was clearly a serious decline in their Old One’s integrative health. One time, hovering by the doorway, Buffy heard him ask her point-blank why she kept bouncing back and forth between Fred and Illyria. “Look; are you trying to be Fred? Because thing is, place like this, Smurfette, have to say it seems like a bad plan. Lot of Big Bads about could knock off a slip of a girl like that. Bint like you’s a lot better off bein’ an Old One; even trussed up inside a human shell, yeah? Didn’t like it any more than you did, bein’ trapped like that, but it beats pretendin’ to be somethin’ you aren’t. Learned that the hard way…”

Illyria’s voice interrupted him, cold and grim. “I am not valued as this. As a trammeled memory of a forgotten God. Your Fred… was valued more dearly even than I at the height of my worship. I would know what this thing is. This… love.”

Buffy shivered at that strange note that might almost have been yearning in that inhuman monotone. The haunted reply had, however, increased her shivers exponentially. 

“Oh, Christ, Illyria. You’re gonna have to earn that bein’ what you are. Get folks to love you as you. Believe me. Tryin’ to get them to love you for the one you aren’t anymore… That way lies grief. Take it from one who knows. You’ll just end up bustin’ out of your shell and hurtin’ someone you love. Maybe everyone you have left…”

Buffy turned away at that, aching for him. Maybe aching for them both.

Another time, Spike and Angel caught their blue friend on her way out the door, bound and determined to trek back to Beverly Hills for her pet corpse. “I must have him again. Wesley. I miss looking upon him.”

“Oh, bloody hell. Listen, Illyria. He’s gone, alright? He’s dead. A sodding mummy, yeah? You’re not gonna bring him back, no matter how many plants you chant at. Hell; for all we know his ghost’s even a dead ringer by now. Haven’t seen hide nor hair of the bloke since your little conversation, an' we all know he's on thin ice playin' his double agent game…”

“I doubt that,” Angel broke in. “I thought he was bound to the building, till he was able to help me with Gunn. But he's too good at what he's doing to be caught, and too useful to the Senior Partners to be thrown out with the bathwater.” When Spike glared at him as if he were losing sight of the mission, his lips thinned and he abruptly changed tacks. “Spike’s right, Illyria. Keeping Wes’ body here won’t do you any good. You’re not gonna be able to stuff his soul back into it. And in the state it’s in, I promise you you’re not gonna wanna reanimate it, so why you’re still keeping it around…”

“Looking upon it gives me peace. Makes me remember that he loved this shell. Makes me think… that I might achieve something like that love again. Wes was also attracted, I think, to me, as I am inside the shell. I felt his emotions, smelled his pheromone response. I thought that perhaps, with time…”

Spike scoffed. “Wouldn’t doubt it. You’re a hell of an impressive creature. But that time is past, Illyria. He’s gone. All that’s left is a ghost. Even if you manage to wangle him out from under the Partners, eventually he’s going to wanna get free of you as well…”

“Wes is mine.”

Spike’s voice turned hard. “I’ll tell you straight up, no one loves the one who keeps ‘em enslaved.” His voice turned regretful. “Sorry, pet, but you’re gonna have to let it go.”

The Old One ceased struggling, shifting instead to stare out the glass doors with a strange, philosophical expression on her face. “I remember the body. And I remember his spirit when it came to speak with me. Both are subject to change, but the mortal shell is the more mutable.” An odd little cock of the head. “That one is strange. It looks less and less like him as the days go by.”

Buffy found it disturbing to see both Spike and Angel cast their eyes skyward in tandem, clearly seeking patience. “Yeah,” Spike answered, “that rotting thing really takes it out of ‘em.” And with a nod at Angel, they more or less vertically carried their wayward Old One back to her suite. Where, while Angel was helping to tuck her in, she promptly reverted to Fred once more, and spent the afternoon touching his face and talking to him about their time together in some cave in Pylea. Because she was just really all over the place.

Buffy and Spike spent long hours downstairs discussing whether, since the war and the people-saving mission and stuff were basically over, they ought to maybe just grab Illyria and head back to the Pink Palace; whether any of their people planned to do so or not. Maria might go, if she could convince her new werewolf beau to come, and Buffy thought they could get Tiny and maybe Rinne to head back. Who knew about the rest, but… It did feel like home in a way, corpse or no; and one sorely missed. They had, after all, lived there for close to three months before coming here to fight the good fight. They’d been at the Hyperion now for two weeks and change, but it wasn’t the same.

“We could make resources last longer if we were there alone. And we can get back quick if there was trouble…”

“Granted, for _you_, pet,” Spike pointed out with a low exhale that wasn’t quite a sigh. “Not sure what we’re going to do about me. We might be running to the end of our ‘find Spike donors’ market out there.”

That troubling thought had definitely occurred to Buffy. They’d gotten her guy fed exactly once in the intervening weeks since the war, via the voluntary offices of bus-driver dude. He’d been so damned glad to get out of that hole down there in the Biltmore that he’d raised his hand right away when Buffy had made her quiet plea, while everyone else up at Silver Lake was still exchanging nervous glances. “I mean, at least this demon’s asking first, right?” he’d said, turning his head from side to side and tittering a little nervously at his fellows. 

No one else had laughed. But he’d gone ahead with it. Hadn’t even flinched, which had been surprising considering how jumpy he was about everything else. 

Actually, he’d gone exceptionally still… and kind of started humming along with Spike during the procedure. And afterward he’d just sat there, eyes closed, for a long while. And said, as Spike was backing away, “Wow.” All breathy. 

“That one’s gonna be a problem,” Spike had told her later, sounding concerned. “Gonna have to make myself scarce for a bit; not hang about.”

Buffy had eyed the guy for a while, frowning. “Why?”

“Been through too much. The high got to him. He’s already addicted.” A little shrug. “And if he wasn’t already a bit of a poof, he’s wonderin’ about takin’ a walk on the wild side now.”

Well… it was a risk. They’d both known it. 

“Least he washed first,” her vamp had commented dourly as they’d blasted back southeast toward the hotel, making her chuckle a little. But yeah. Barring heading back up every six days or so to give CDL-boy a happy, they were rapidly developing a problem in that department. “We should be able to find you some people out of a few thousand, right?” she asked as she paced the basement, trying for hopeful.

“What?” he asked sardonically, and glared up at her from the couch. “Regulars? Put ‘em on shifts so they don’t get too attached, I suppose. Set me up my own little private suckhouse. Escort service for one…”

Now he was starting to piss her off. “Dammit, Spike,” she hissed, plopping heavily down beside him.

“Bad as Wolfram and Hart, I did that.” And his tone, as he said it, was adamant. “Be livin’ up to the reputation, yeah? LA still has one demon lord…” He shoved himself to his feet and away from the seat, started pacing. 

/Well… shit./ She pushed right up to join him, caught him by the arm. “I don’t know how, but I’m not going to let you _starve_, either!” 

He swung around, riled up now… and halted mid-retort. “We’re both brassed off at the situation, not at each other,” he informed her reasonably.

“Well… yeah,” she agreed, feeling kind of stupid.

“And I’m right terrified.”

It took all the wind out of her angry. “Me too.”

He reached out one tentative arm.

She joined him. And they held on tight. “We’ll figure something out,” he assured her after a long moment. Murmured it into her hair in that way that told her that he didn’t believe a word of what he was saying, but wanted her to be happy.

“Yeah,” she agreed, and clung tighter, fists folded up in fierce resolve. And knew he would hear from her tones that she wasn’t going to give him up without a fight. 

She just wasn’t going to fight _him_ anymore about it.

He sighed heavily as he stroked her hair, but he didn’t say anything more. And she didn’t offer any further suggestions. 

Not that night.

Didn’t mean it wasn’t terrifying, feeling him slowly dwindle in her arms from muscular to slim-and-wiry to just plain slim.

It turned out though that there were still people out there wandering around needing saving, or so Angel seemed to be proving from his forays out on winged Cordelia. He brought them back in ones and twos every other ‘night’… and to Spike’s clear shock and Buffy’s never-ending gratitude, he actually offered something unexpected on about the fourth ‘night’ out. “Hey. Spike.”

“Yeah?” They were sitting down in the lobby on the round gray couch-thing, murmuring together about the logistical problem of it, and so hadn’t seen him touch down out there in the atrium till he stepped through the doors. 

“I’ve been thinking. You’ve got a problem. I’ve got a problem. Maybe we can combine forces.”

It came out of nowhere, after days of mutual avoidance. Buffy felt almost too nonplussed at the overture even to ask what the heck he was talking about. 

Spike, though, was quite clearly suspicious as hell. “What problem is that, Peaches?”

“Well,” he answered thoughtfully, “I’m fresh out of spells. Can’t pretend to vamp anymore. I need muscle. And considering you’re stronger right now than I was at my prime even when you’re half-starved…”

Neither mentioned the why, which started with ‘Slayer’ and ended with ‘fed’. “Hurts to admit it, does it?”

Buffy could throw something at him, the way Angel’s face closed up. His whole posture; crossed arms and everything. “Spike, shut up and listen to the man.” She had the feeling Angel had been about to say something fairly important. 

Spike sighed and uncrossed his arms. Straightened. “Sorry,” he managed, and even managed to sound genuine about it. “I’m just hungry. Makes me priggish.”

Angel relented slightly. Waved a hand a little before shoving it back under his other wrist. “I get it. Anyway, you’re on pretty constant infusions of Slayer blood…” 

/Okay, never mind, just put it right out there./

Angel’s mouth tightened, and his dark eyes darted briefly away, to light anywhere but on Buffy’s neck. “You’d be a hell of an ally out there in the field. Especially if you weren’t underfed. So I thought you and I…” He made what was clearly a huge effort, uncrossed his own arms to let them dangle loosely at his sides in a show of faux-relaxation. “…And maybe Buffy if she’s willing, could go out together on these patrols.”

Spike was clearly amazed. “Oh yeah?” His wary expression deepened to something calculating. “And just what would we be getting out of this arrangement? Because we’re doin’ fine on our own, drivin’ around…”

/Shut _up_, Spike!/

“Networking.” Angel said it baldly, eyes on theirs stark as anything Buffy had ever seen. “And you know you’re not. Now… I’m not gonna pass judgment on how you’re eating, because I’m not where you are right now. If Buffy’s okay with it that’s good enough for me, since obviously if you’ve hurt anyone you wouldn’t be here anymore. I know her well enough to know that she doesn’t let her heart get in the way if any vamp crosses that line…”

Buffy looked briefly away. What Angel didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, and there had been extenuating circumstances when The First had been involved. 

Spike opened his mouth, of course… and you know what? Buffy had had enough with his self-destruction. She dug her fingers into his narrowing wrist hard enough to make the tendons pop a little. He subsided into grumpy silence, let her take up the thread of the proposition. “You’re saying you’re willing to offer us aerial reconnaissance for our mutual rescues in exchange for our services as a bodyguard, under the understanding that Spike needs to make… connections. For future…”

“Assignations?” Spike filled in, only a hint of snark in his voice. His eyes on Angel’s were no longer suspicious, or even wary. “Why are you doing this? Really? Why do you care if I starve?”

Angel didn’t waver, eyes on those of his errant grand-childe. “Because I know… what it’s like to try to do the right thing. That finding your way… isn’t always the easiest path.” The tension sang in him, and Buffy could only imagine how much that admission of similarity had cost him. 

Then his eyes flitted to hers briefly. Back to Spike’s; but she had seen the sorrow there. And a hint of maybe… something else, behind the similarity? Had he once lived off of catch-and-release, for a while? Not just animal blood?

It had never really occurred to her, before, but he’d been doing this a long time, and there hadn’t always been hospitals, and transfusions, and blood banks, and he’d been in hiding from human society for a long time. Not to mention that Spike had said in passing one time that Angel had come back briefly when they’d been in China—or, at least, she remembered him saying something about Angel being less impressed than he’d thought his father-figure would have been with his first Slayer-kill. He would have had to fool Darla somehow, if he’d been living with them again, wouldn’t he? That thing with Xin Rong was way after he’d been cursed. And if he’d learned how to do it then without killing people, why stop after that?

Anyway, he probably hadn’t been frequenting butcher shops for a lot of it. Not to mention that if he’d been living off of just rats when she’d first met him he probably wouldn’t have looked so…

Well-fed.

Huh. That was a thought that had never occurred to her before now, and wow. /God, Buffy, why did it never occur to you that your original white knight might never have been without his tarnish-y bits?/ 

That was what she was seeing in his eyes, then. Not just an effort at bettering himself, in her eyes, by extending an olive branch to Spike. Empathy. An admission of similarity, and an effort at redemption. “And because if you starve,” he told his scion quietly, “it’ll hurt Buffy.” A declaration; that if that happened, it would not matter to him that she might turn to him for comfort. That he didn’t want it to happen that way. 

This was an overture, a peace-offering; and they would take it, in the spirit it was given. “Thank you, Angel,” she answered quietly, for them both. 

So they discussed it. Whether it would be better for the purposes of the thing for her to come with them or no. Pro-list, the two of them probably got along better without her around. 

Con one; she’d go nuts worrying about Spike if she wasn’t there to watch his back while he was this depleted, especially if he had to cover Angel on top of watching his own six. (Yeah, she’d picked up some military lingo back during her abortive Initiative days.) 

Con two; she wouldn’t be known to any rescuees, and they’d owe her no allegiance, so if Spike was to do any ‘networking’, as Angel had called it, he’d have to do it on his own. Which, Spike admitted, he could no doubt do, and, “Maybe I’ve been a bit of a wanker, letting you set my meals up for me like I’m a diner in a damn restaurant and you’re the concierge,” a description that had somehow hit her funny-bone and sent her into completely misplaced spurts of laughter as she pictured him tying a napkin around his neck while she ushered donors in front of him so that he could eye them up and down and say, ‘No, no… That one!’ and she could bow and say, _‘Bon appetit’_… and maybe she needed more sleep or something. Maybe less. Or maybe she needed more vitamin D or veggies or something.

“We need to get you out of this dimension, Buffy. You’re going straight off your bird, you know that, right?”

“I’m fine.” She wiped her eyes, still gasping a little. “God.”

He eyed her, clearly concerned. “Not sure you are, pet.”

***

In the end Spike decided to try it alone once, and then if it didn’t go well, Buffy would come the next time. Which meant she spent a ‘night’ cooling her heels alone in the hotel with only Illyria for company (Connor and Gwen were god alone knew where, probably trying to figure out how to have sex without actually touching). Buffy spent a while poking around the upper floors and wondering what to do with herself. Got bored, and was just thinking of heading out with her axe to make a quick patrol of the area directly to the west of the 110, if only because Downtown itself was too secure these days to stir up anything interesting, at and she was going out of her mind if she didn’t get any action… when Connor came busting back in through the doors, Gwen at his heels. They were both panting. Connor's eyes were wide, his face pale as a sheet. “It’s that Gunn guy! He’s here! With some kind of…”

The doors blew open behind them, and the back of Buffy's neck went nuts as the vampire Charles Gunn strode in, some sort of magickal artifact in his hands that looked like a twisted, wrought iron ankh. He pointed it at Gwen and Connor, and they flew backward, Connor hitting a pillar and falling with a sickening thud to slide to the tiled floor. “Connor!” Gwen shrieked, and leaped from the ground where she’d fallen back onto her elbows, eyes wide. “You _promised!”_

Gunn sneered. “I lied.” He swung toward Buffy while she was still busy trying to recalculate the whole ‘Gwen is up to something’ rubric. “Wanna try me on your own, Slayer-girl?”

“Well, you kind of have an unfair advantage, there,” she pointed out blandly, eyes on the metal gadget he had directed at her. “You wanna point that thing somewhere else so we can have a real fight?” 

“Nah,” he answered. “I already know I can take you. This is for someone else.” And he did something that slammed into her like a huge fist made out of air. Buffy found herself flying through empty space, and slammed hard against something with her back; something that had a long line through the middle of it. She landed with that line right across her mid-back; a heavy jolt that knocked the wind out of her. She spent a second or two working on that and watching through the resultant haze as he turned toward the stair. 

/Okay, but that’s cheating./

Through the haze, Buffy noticed Gwen had the gloves off and was attempting to jump him, which, points for her. But he shrugged her off, and why the hell wasn’t she using her electric fingers on the bastard? 

“Too bad this makes a great lightning rod, huh?” the vamp taunted her, and Buffy realized only then that Gwen had literally taken the gloves off and was fighting to try to make something happen with her hands, but it kept fizzling out 

Damn, what _was_ that thing?

“Hey!” Gunn called up the stairs. “Illyria!”

/Oh. Crap./ Fred had known Charles Gunn. Spike had said something about their having been very close. She got the impression that maybe they had even dated in the past. Which meant the chances of her staying Illyria when she saw her ex-friend down here were probably not of the good.

Buffy’s breath was coming back. She fumbled in her belt for the stake she’d slipped there with the intent of giving it to Spike before he’d left. She’d forgotten to hand it to him when he’d kissed her hard and then swung up onto the dragon behind Angel all lusty and hopeful… which turned out to be a good thing for her now, if she could just get behind Gunn while he was focused on the upstairs landing, and distracted by fending off Gwen.

She got within a few feet before he turned his head just a little. “Where’s the big fish, by the way? And my Slayers? You know, the ones you and your boy stole from me?”

/Wait, what?/ “Betta George isn’t here. Neither are the girls. If you came looking for them, you’re in for a world of disappointment.” God, she could really use Spike right now, hungry or not. Could use Angel, even, since he knew this guy inside and out.

This bastard had all the advantages right now. 

Maybe she could keep him talking till they got back. “If you want I can take you to where they’re bunked.”

He just chuckled. “Yeah. Sure. You’re gonna just take me to ‘em.” Burning eyes turned away from the upper floors to meet hers. “Stake me soon as look at me, is more like.”

She shook her head. “I don’t stake every vampire I know,” she pointed out reasonably enough.

“Yeah, well, I’m not sleepin’ with you,” he answered; a nice turn of the screw. “Don’t plan to, either. You’re not my type. I get the feelin’ any other vamp’s still on your list of straight-to-dust; especially one who tried to off your ex.”

He kind of had a point; about the last part at least. “You’re right that that didn’t exactly endear you to me…” He chuckled again, as if she’d said something really amusing. “But again; I’ve learned that some vamps are more than meets the eye. If I can get them to talk to me instead of just going for the fast kill, sometimes we can get somewhere. And you’re no idiot fledge, all grr and bloodlust.” She tried for an interested head-tilt. “Angel says you have a plan to get us all out of here.”

“He told you that, huh?” He sounded amused.

“He did.” And she could play to his weaknesses. Shared some of them. Use psychology to stall, like Holden Webster had done with her. “I respect some of what you told him, actually. He made a mistake, and now we’re all here. And he’s not from here. Not like you and me. He’ll probably never really understand what it means to see this city, these people, like this. How it _feels_. To be so mad about it you want to kill every one of them.”

The dark eyes blazed… and went amber as he vamped. “This is where you tell me we’re alike, that it, girl? Because you were born here?”

“And bred.” She took one cautious step forward. “I get it, Gunn. I’d like to hear your plan.” At least he was still talking.

The game face twisted into something hideously angry, and the hand holding the heavy iron ankh lifted up over his head in a punctuating gesture. “Let me tell you something, girl. I come from these streets. I don’t know where you grew up in this city, but it sure the hell wasn’t the same city as me.”

And that was probably true. Nothing she could say to that, except, “No. Not any more than some of the other people Spike and I are fighting to save every night." Probably best not to mention Angel right now. "I get it…”  
  
It burst out of him. “You don’t know a damn _thing_, girl! I don’t care who you’ve saved or where you came from! You know who _did?_ The white girl who knew the life. I just found her; up at the Center with all her kids. All _my_ kids. Eaten by a pack of Verulga. She fought ‘em, all by herself. And if I was human I woulda been up there protectin’ ‘em. Instead I was down here; because I am what I am now. And that was because of your dick ex-boyfriend, the boss-man. So guess what, girl? I’m gonna _fix_ it!”  
  
Here he was, the man behind the demon; still there, still living his agony. “What was her name?” Buffy asked softly, wondering if Charles Gunn had loved this girl.

“Anne. Anne Steele. She knew it. The really real.”  
  
It caught her in the throat and the belly. /Well… at least it wasn’t vampires./ “I knew her too,” Buffy told him softly. “She came from Sunnydale. Well, not originally, but… We helped each other out of a demon slave-ring here, once. I gave her the name, and my apartment, before I went home to pick up slaying again…”

His gaze jerked to hers, amber and amazed… and arrested, for a moment, in his shock. 

“We’re all a part of this, Gunn,” she tried. “All of us, in it together. And I do know. I know what it’s like to be living my life, walking down these streets, going to school and thinking everything is normal… and then seeing my first vampire. Dusting my first vampire. And knowing that nothing will ever be the same again. And it never was, was it, Charles?”

He stared at her for a long moment, ocher eyes glinting in the low light of what passed for sunset here. “It wasn’t for my baby sister. She never made it to twenty.”

She nodded, keeping her voice steady. “Neither did I. And then I didn’t make it to twenty-two. And I almost lost my sister too. I died so she didn’t. I get it.” She stepped forward again. “You fought. But they got her. You fought. They got you too. And you still want to win. So keep fighting, Charles.”

His game-face twisted. Crunched. And he was Charles Gunn again. “Shut _up!”_ he half-screamed. “You don’t _know_ me! You don’t know _anything!”_

“She knows a fair bit about it, Charlie-Boy.” Spike’s voice, coming in from the atrium doors, had never been so welcome. 

There was no way Gunn could multiple targets at once with that thing, right?

The vamp sneered as Spike and Angel walked in from the dragon’s yard. “Where you been, guys? You almost missed the party!” And he turned back to yell upstairs once more. “Hey! Illyria!”

“She’s probably deep in conversation with a dead fern or summat,” Spike put in genially, but his eyes were on Buffy, begging the question. Skipping over Connor’s still form against the pillar, over Gwen hovering nearby, panting and freaked. 

Behind him, Angel’s eyes stayed on his son’s body. Buffy had time to pray the kid wasn’t dead as Angel paled, as his eyes turned to Gunn’s with a blazing ferocity she hadn’t seen from him since he was a vamp himself. “What did you do to my son?”

“He got in my way. Just like you did.” Gunn seemed to be really working to get under Angel’s skin. “Must be a family trait. But then, I never liked that kid. Remember when he tried to kill all of us?” Dark eyes blazed into dark. “I remember how you sold us all into bondage with Wolfram and Hart to protect him, after. Gave him a pretty new life… and us a bunch of shiny new memories and a contract with those bastards that probably extends to long after death, if my mystical run at the bar taught me anything.” He sneered. “And I made a damn good lawyer.”

Angel looked shaken. “You did,” he answered softly. “And yeah. I messed up. I got Wes stuck here forever. I don’t know how long his clause is, but he’s trapped as a ghost, since his contract’s not up yet. I dunno about you…”

“Just another thing you have to pay for, then. Not that Wes doesn’t deserve it, hookin’ up with Lilah and kidnapping the kid. Fred didn’t, but I guess she got off lucky, right?” His face twisted. “She just got eaten. Probably better in the long run, right?” He lifted his eyes back to the upstairs hall. “What is takin’ her so long, anyway?” And then something that looked like a fond smile touched his lips. “I remember Fred used to talk to plants. Do you think that has something to do with it?” And then his mouth tightened as the vamp returned. “Nah. Can’t be, can it?”

Angel tensed a little. “We think she’s trying to bring them back so she can bring Wes back.”

Gunn snorted. “Well, doesn’t that sound like a tasty treat at this point. What, does she have his body stashed somewhere?”

Angel turned to Spike and Buffy, putting on a faux-curious expression. “What, is it still back at Beverly Hills, or did she manage to bring it finally? I haven’t been paying attention.”

“Nah, still back there,” Spike answered flatly.

“Thank God,” Buffy put in, wry.

“Gotta say, I’m glad. Stuffing that dick of a ghost into somethin’ that putrid woulda made an all-round nasty zombie at this point, you guys.” Gunn shrugged, clearly bored with the conversation. “Well, since she’s not too busy, I’ll go up and get her, I guess…”

All pretense at civilized conversation vanished. “Like hell you will,” Spike informed him in a low growl.

Gunn didn’t bother to give any warning; just swung around and plowed both him and Angel down with the ankh thing. 

“What the bloody hell was that?”

Buffy had been waiting for an opening. While Gunn still had the thing pointed at the guys, she made her move; dove and rolled up, stake in her hand, and came up at a perfect angle to drive it right in between his shoulder blades. 

The only problem was they weren’t there anymore. And the ankh deal, when it hit her across the face, felt like a swing from Glory or something similar. 

Damn, he was fast. And that goddamned magickal tool of his _sucked_.

“I’m tired of this shit.” He swung again, to point the thing at her. Spike roared, coming to his feet to charge, because he didn’t need to wait to get his breath back. Angel, who did, was still down for the count. But Spike was miles away, and Buffy was on her own. She caught the damn thing, felt it burn cold at her touch. Fought to twist it away, wondering what it took for Gunn to pull the unseen trigger of it. What it could do to a person at point-blank range. Was this it? Staring down the barrel of the Egyptian symbol of life and death? Because that would be just too richly ironic, after everything. 

Then Gunn was down, as something heavy slammed into him from the left side, still holding his weapon so that it was wrenched from Buffy’s hands. And he was roaring as he was hit by yet another pale blur, from the right—Spike, frantic, eyes wide—and then there was a melee, and Buffy was up to join it. Everything turned into a confusion of limbs as she recognized Connor back in the fight, weakened, but he had pulled himself back to his feet in time to knock Gunn off of his before he could kill her. He wasn’t strong enough for this fight, though, and Gunn had him by the throat. The vamp was barely paying attention to the blows Spike was raining on him, and Buffy didn’t have an angle, so she threw Spike the stake. He caught it deftly and staked Gunn precisely through the back. The ashes cascaded…

Gunn had Connor by the throat, and he was barely paying attention to the blows Spike was raining on him, and Buffy didn’t have an angle, so she threw Spike the stake. He caught it deftly and… Wait, what?

Spike held the stake aloft, staring first at her, then at a shockingly re-corporealized Gunn, then at the stake in his own hand. Shifted to try to get a better angle as Gunn maneuvered his weapon to point it at Connor. Somewhere behind them Angel was screaming as he came to his feet, thudded to join them…

Spike got the angle finally while Gunn flailed around them, getting his weapon to bear and Buffy fought to keep his attention away, to keep his back turned to her guy so that he could…

The stake plunged home. The ashes…

Gunn had Connor by the throat, and he was barely paying attention to the blows Spike was raining on him, and Buffy didn’t have an angle, so she threw Spike the stake. He caught it deftly and…

What the actual _fuck?_

“He can do a time-loop!” Angel screamed, pounding closer. Dove at them, striving to join the fight. Spike grimly set to trying to make the staking stick while Buffy went back to work with that nauseous feeling of someone who had been through one of these hideous time-wrinkles before. /I killed that goddamn mummy hand and I _will_ kill you, you bastard!/

Gunn still had his weapon point inexorably at Connor. Angel was on him, had him in a half-nelson while Spike lifted the stake to drive it home…

And then Gwen was screaming, “No!” and had shoved herself in between Connor and the ankh. 

It discharged. The concussion hit Gwen full-contact. And tore her body apart cell by cell.

You could see it; the way the ripples cascaded through her. She looked like a pond when a rock hit it. No one could live through that. 

When she hit the ground she sounded like a wet sack of hamburger. Buffy had heard that sound before; all the time, at the Doublemeat, and just no. 

The girl had betrayed them to Gunn. But she hadn’t deserved… _that_.

Spike was too stunned, even, to stake the bastard. He just stared. So did Angel.

And then Connor was rolling over to shake the body. Screaming her name as she lolled like gelatin in a loose, fleshy envelope, and Gunn was already too far away to be staked; halfway up the stairs… And they were after him, but he had that godawful weapon, and who knew what else it could do. They needed a goddamned crossbow, why didn’t they have any _crossbows_ here?

When he burst into Illyria’s room with them pounding after she was bent over a desiccated philodendron, apparently unaware of anything that had been going on downstairs. Her head lifted from her contemplation, expression placidly disappointed in the interruption. Until she saw Gunn’s face. Then, as Buffy had predicted, all the color abruptly drained from her bizarre countenance. “Charles?” she whispered. Because, of course, she was Fred. At the worst possible time. 

Spike groaned. “Bloody fuck, Illyria, you could’ve punched him first!”

Gunn grabbed the trembling body up into his arms. Swung around, brandishing his metal death-stick to hold them off as he backed away. “I’m sorry about this, Illyria,” he said then, and he actually sounded like he meant it. 

And then he stabbed the ankh right through her abdomen. She wrenched up around the metal, screaming. 

And did not go blue again.

“What the _fuck!” _Spike screamed with her, and Buffy couldn’t believe this. She just couldn’t. What was even the point of coming here to...

Spike had started for Gunn. Buffy had too, automatically, but the ankh was out again, pointed at them and dripping way too much blood. So much blood, and that was a mortal girl right now. She was bleeding out, he’d hit her liver or something…

“I might be back for the fish and the girls. I might not be. I might not even need ‘em. We’ll see what I can talk her into, like this.” And without another word Gunn stepped back. Broke the window open with his elbow… and leaped out backward, holding the tiny, friable body in his arms.

He left a massive trailing of blood behind him.

***  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_Teigh amagh: _Get out, be off with you, etc_   
__meisce: _drunkard  
  
or, at least, so says Google.  
So, um... All of this totally loosely follows the main plot-points of the comics, but still follows entirely my own timeline, version of events, and weird, random through-line. Which means, hehe, I simply cannot WAIT till next post, which I am convinced will get me hate-mail even though it won't be a surprise for peeps who read After The Fall. Or maybe it will, since it is quite a different event in there.   
  
*sadistic cackling*


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEE! *kicks heels in sadistic glee* Today's the day! The day I've been waiting for for nine months! The day I get to post the chapter I've been sitting on since last year's June Camp Nano, and which I fully expect will get me hate mail. GOD, I CANNOT WAIT FOR THE HATE MAIL! (What does that say about me? Probably bad things. LMAO!!! WHEEEEE)
> 
> Ok, so, luckily for all y'all, it broke up in such a way that it's not a cliffhanger, so I won't get as much hate mail as I would have gotten otherwise, but still. Also, in my defense, this kind of happened in the comics, but NOWHERE near the way in which I'm doing it, and also not 'offscreen', but full bloody monty front and center... (which is the theme for the remainder of this tale. I'm a big fan of 'the same things are fated to happen to the characters, but in different ways for different reasons, so they can work them out in better ways' method)... Hopefully I pull at all the heartstrings (seriously. Hate-mail me. Feel free. *snickers*)  
devil
> 
> Gawd, I'm excited.
> 
> Oh. Also, warning in here for anal sex, somewhere around, um... *goes to check*  
Somewhere early on after the third set of stars. But there's more entertainment after that portion of festivities, so if you can figure out when to haze back in, there's also a nice 69 sitch, if you're into that... Not sure how to let people know when one fiesta ends and the next begins, so I guess go in on your own recognizance.
> 
> (I think th-th-that's all, folks.)  
*still flailing in glee*

Spike was really not in a self-forgiveness kind of place right now. All he could hear was himself saying ‘I let Gunn kill Fred’. She wasn’t even Illyria in his head right now, though, upon consultation with Angel, what led-by-Senior-Partner-visions Gunn might want with Illyria was possibly a lot worse than what lovestruck-vampire-Gunn might want with the shell of his ex-girlfriend. Not that he could turn her into a vampire when she was already playing host to an Old One, so what was the point of stabbing her to death? To take her away from them? Weaken them by removing their most powerful ally? 

Just, what? 

Connor was a mess. Injured but ignoring any attempts to treat him, incapable of dealing with what had happened to Gwen. He hadn’t heard the proof of her betrayal, probably wouldn’t believe it of her if he had. And she had died for him in the end, so Buffy, in informing Angel, almost thought they shouldn’t tell him at all. Except…

Her betrayal was no doubt how Gunn had found out where Illyria was. Knew when to come; when they were at their weakest. Though… maybe she hadn’t known his plan, had even tried to feed him false information? He had definitely come thinking the slayerettes and George were still here, and they had moved out three days prior. 

It explained all of her unexcused absences, though.

None of them would every really know the full story of Gwen Raiden, except that she had been some kind of double agent… and she had sacrificed herself to save her boyfriend’s life. “Who knows; maybe he promised her some magickal talisman to get her electricity under control or something,” Angel murmured, sounding numb. “She had a device back home that helped her with that, but it clearly didn’t work here; and Gunn knew all about that. I’m betting he used that information to get to her; to convince her he knew how to get us all back so she could be with Connor.” He shrugged wearily. “Anyway, let him mourn her in peace,” he pronounced finally. “What does it matter anyway? Gunn could’ve figured out where we were without her. It wasn’t like it was a secret. And he knows this place inside and out. We were probably idiots to have stayed here this long.” He sounded so unbelievably tired, to have seen what he had seen from a man he had once known so well. “Just… let’s leave it, huh?”

“If that’s what you want.” Buffy honestly didn’t care either way at this point, and had gone back to check in on Spike.

To find him gone. 

Fucking gone. The unbelievable idiot. 

He’d even left a note, because he loved her enough to do that much_. ‘I’m sorry, my Love. I had to. Just in case… I know it’s too late, but I needed to try. And I knew you wouldn’t let me go, if you knew.’_

It was signed with an ornate-looking, if somewhat rushed ‘S’… but that had been crossed out, roughly… and replaced, heartbreakingly, with, ‘William’.

/Goddammit goddammit goddammit…/ She crumbled the note in her hand, the loose leaf torn from some old, leftover piece of legal paper and written in his unexpectedly elegant, flowing, and surprisingly precise left-hand script. Symptom of a bygone era, with those odd, high loops and the little serifs that made it almost illegible… Especially where it was all jagged, at the end, with emotion.

He hadn’t even asked her to come. He thought he might not make it back, and he hadn’t even asked her to come with him. /You unbelievable, absolute fucking asshole!/

It wasn’t a dear john. He was going to try to come back. But… just, no.

She was moving before she knew it; grabbing up axe, a spare sword, rummaging for something she could turn into a stake, since he’d taken the other. Heading up the stairs in ringing leaps. She needed a goddamned _crossbow!_

“Buffy, what’s…” 

She slammed the hardware down on the counter. “Do you have a crossbow? Anywhere?”

Angel stared at her as if she’d gone insane. “You’re gonna go after him? Alone?”

He thought she gave a shit about Gunn right now. As if. “No, I’m going after my idiot bullhead fucking stupid vampire boyfriend before he gets himself killed trying to save someone who’s probably already bled to death, because he’s a noble fucking moron.”

Something about this speech seemed to tickle Angel inordinately. “Can I come? I’ll find a crossbow.” When she swung around to glare at him, because she so did not have the time, he lifted his hands in a gesture of total peace and harmony. “I just wanna help. And maybe watch you kick his ass after we get him back. Because that would be really fun, too.”

She didn’t have time for sugar-coating his ego. “I’m not going to be able to protect you.”

“I’m not asking for it. I’ll keep myself out of harm’s way.” When she almost turned away he caught her arm; the first time he’d touched her since she couldn’t even remember when. “Buffy. I actually do care a little bit about him, believe it or not. And more about you. So let me help. I do still know how to fight. I promise I won’t get in the way.” And then, when she hesitated, “Besides, you need someone to drive, or you’ll have to wreck what? Two, three cars to get there?”

Okay, that was below the belt. But he was right that she couldn’t afford the time it would take her to navigate slowly around fifteen miles of stalled vehicles and other random obstacles with her incredibly crappy driving skills. She would have to, though, since she also wasn’t the one pre-loaded with the skills to just hotwire another one if she messed up… because her asshat fucking moron vampire lover had been the one who did that stuff, and he was the one she had to go save, because he was an idiot. 

She didn’t even want to think of the stress of the long, slow, painstaking journey, wondering the whole time if she would be too late to save his ass. It would send her blood pressure through the roof. Spike would have driven the Cougar or the Harley or whatever there in minutes; was probably already in trouble. She had no time to spare… and for better or worse, Angel was a much better driver than she. However… “Why can’t we just take your dragon?”

He held up one finger as if to tell her to hold that thought, and jogged away into the office behind the counter. She could hear him back there digging into the pile of loose, damaged weapons that had been left there by the rest of the crew upon departure. “Here,” he told her upon his return, and slapped a crossbow down on the table. It looked like hell, but relatively functional, and he even had a short belt-quiver in his other hand with about five more-or-less undamaged-looking bolts in it. “The trigger’s broken, but you can probably fix it on the way, right?”

/Oh./ So not the room to fix a busted-up crossbow while flying around a’dragonback. “Fine,” she snapped. “Drive. And stay out of the way when we get there.”

“I’ll cover your back. That’s all.” He tried one of his old, self-depreciating smiles, and the little crackle hit his voice; the one that had once made her knees go weak. “One fully-human sniper, at your service.”

She couldn’t. Couldn’t feel or think. No time, even, for gratitude. She reached for the weapon. “Give it to me and let’s go.”

He didn’t flinch as she snatched it up and tucked it under her arm along with the sword, flung the axe over her shoulder… merely slung the quiver over his own and looked resolute. “I’ll just let Connor know where we’re headed.”

She managed a short nod as she made for the door. 

The drive was interminable, though she could tell Angel had it floored as often as he was able to do so. Though, god knew if they were even going to the right place; if Gunn was even still at his old haunts down in South LA, since the last time they’d found him he’d at least moved across the block…

“Are we going the right way?” Angel asked her after about ten minutes’ silent swerving around.

She looked up from her furious tweaking of the broken trigger. She had almost had the damn thing, but the tiny wire wouldn’t slide over the notch in the wood, the way her fingers were shaking, and she was thus doubly irritated at the interruption. “What?”

He sighed, sounding reluctant but resigned. “Can you feel if we’re headed the right way?” No hint showed in his voice of what it must have cost him to ask. “Obviously I can’t feel him anymore, so...”

/Oh. Right./ Feeling dumb and chastened, Buffy closed her eyes and tried to settle enough to reach out. Tough to do when she was still roiling with rage and frustration—and not a little hurt—but she managed to still herself enough, finally, to _feel_. 

“Yeah,” she answered finally. “Keep heading this way. I’ll… tell you if it changes.”

“Got it.” Veering around a little maroon Kia hatchback, Angel gunned them ahead once more without further comment.

Her vampire was still alive. That was what she could take from that moment of contact, and she clung to it. Hoped he could feel her on the other end; on her way and furious. /You _better_ be able to tell that I’m fucking _livid_ at you, you goddamned asshole…/

As she parsed what she was getting from the blood-bond, the concentration helped to steady her shaking fingers, and she was finally able to get the loop of wire over the notch in the trigger. She let out the breath she’d been holding and leaned her head back to sight along the stock, pulling her finger to dry-fire the piece. It clicked dully and was a hair sticky, but it snapped back into place for another shot, and the wire held. 

Good enough.

Spike wasn’t in trouble. At least not yet. He was in some kind of holding position; watching from somewhere. Waiting for the right moment. At least he was smart enough not to go busting in, balls-first, like he would’ve done a few years ago, the utter dumbass…

/I am so going to kill you myself when we get to you, you absolute…/

The tears rose to the surface. She fought them down viciously, beyond angry at herself for this new volatility of emotion. She did not have the time for all these goddamned _feelings!_

Anger. She could hold on to anger. It blocked out everything else. It had power, it…

/It poisoned you for years./

And she knew it. But. /I can’t be weak. Not right now. Not until… this is over, and I have him back.

/I _can’t_ lose him again./ There had been too many…

The visions flashed. Angel; his uncomprehending eyes as a sword plunged into his heart, and she felt it grate, and vibrate with the remains of his life at the ends of her fingers, in the hearts of her palms as the blood spilled… and dragged him away from her.

He’d never really come back. Not really. Not to her.

/Not again./

Dawn, standing at the end of a shaky metal tower, blood streaming from a half-dozen superficial cuts. Ready to run into hell for them all. Her beautiful sister. A part of her. 

/Never again./

The goodbye… and the sudden, shocking pain of burning. Of death. And the agony, the confusion, the loss that was rebirth. The need to rebuild oneself, one day at a time…

/We’re the only ones who _know_./

Spike; alight with the incandescence of the amulet; aflame in her hand. So beautiful… and so ready to leave her. Because he hadn’t known, yet, then, what she had. What he did, now. _“No, you don't… But thanks for saying it. Now go!”_

She knew. Knew what that was like. What he had done; _voluntarily_. What he’d had to relearn and rebuild, one day at a time now, brought back against his will; and what if this time there was no rebuilding?

No. She couldn’t. Couldn’t _see_ that again. Couldn’t let him…

Couldn’t lose. Any. More.

“Drive faster.”

Their final objective took some fine-tuning. They had to veer away at the last minute, toward some side-structures in what looked to be a run-down strip-mall. “Cut the engine. We’re close.”

Angel complied wordlessly, the roar of the Plymouth dying into silence.

Buffy eyed the tops of the low buildings, frowning. “I think he was up there. Watching. But… he’s not anymore?”

Angel made a sound that might have been dark amusement with a hint of knowing. “He always did like perching up above and making snarky comments from on high before he attacked.” When she shot him a glance, he lifted his hand again to make peace. “I’m just saying. It’s all very sound, tactically, to gain the high ground, get the lay of the land; but does he always have to be so _theatrical_ about it?”

She didn’t dignify that with a response; just stepped out of the car to circle slowly around to the right. “He went in, I think. Over there.”

“Okay. I’m right behind you. When we find him I’ll hang back. Find a good shot.”

She skewered him with a glance over her shoulder. “Make sure who you’re aiming at.”

“Hey. Would I do that?” At her narrowed gaze he went total-innocent. “Seriously!”

“C’mon.”

The bond was helpful in that it guided her to where her errant idiot of a boyfriend was currently located. It was unhelpful in that it also let her know just exactly when he went toe-to-toe with an enraged Charles Gunn. 

She could feel the pain from blows, almost sense the impacts. Feel his desperation… “We have to hurry.” /Spike, what the fuck were you _thinking?_ I don’t care how much Slayer blood you have in you, you’re still weak, and he has to have some kind of spell on him! He held off _five_ of us, three stronger-than-human and one with a built-in tazer, he has all these magickal thingamajigs… and you think you can just waltz up and take him on your own?/ She was going to _kill_ him, she was going to…

They blew into the correct building—some kind of dry-cleaners—via the back door. Burst through the hanging racks of plastic-coated jackets and dresses…

Spike was spinning and darting, sword out and looking thoroughly impressive, and honestly she would be incredibly turned on by his style right now if she wasn’t beyond pissed off. “Angel!” she snapped, and he nodded, jumped up on the nearest pressing counter to get a better view through the clothes. 

Buffy pushed through the racks, tore them down viciously as she neared. Gunn was swinging thunderously at her man, all ferocious attack-without-retreat. Clearly his style was ‘best defense is a good offense’. He had Spike working a defensive angle, because they were fighting in too close a space.  
  
Which also meant that she couldn’t get in. She was stuck behind her guy, where she couldn’t reach his attacker to help in any way. And it seemed Spike was trying to get _to_ something; something near the front of the store, but Gunn was holding the narrow right-of-way between machines and wall. “What the hell are you _doing?”_

Spike jerked, though he must have known they were there. Must have smelled them both, felt her approach via the bond. 

Then his teeth bared, and he went at Gunn all the harder. He was in full game face, eyes glowing gold and everything about him wildly feral. Magnificent, yes, and looking stronger in the fight than she had honestly ever seen him… but he wasn’t thinking. Not even a little bit. 

/Damn you./ “Spike, move out of the way!” he needed to give Angel room if he was going to get a clear shot. Right now the only thing keeping the idiot alive was his own furious skill and the fact that both he and Gunn were fighting in close quarters, didn’t have room to maneuver, bring their full weaponry to bear. (That, and it appeared that for some reason, Gunn wasn’t using his weird ankh thing anymore, which, yay!) But this also meant that Buffy couldn’t get in there to help, either.

The only thing that could really fit was a crossbow bolt. But it wasn’t like she wanted to give away the punch-line to their friend, here. 

Spike didn’t budge, of course. He was too busy running on instinct and vengeance. “Buffy, did you see what he _did?”_ His voice was hoarse, cracked… and okay. Maybe it wasn’t vengeance. 

It sounded like grief.

She followed his gaze over Gunn’s broad shoulder, sparing a moment from the fight to case the rest of the room. 

Behind the combatants, spread out on the front counter of the store, was something that looked like a makeshift altar. It was made of some kind of old door, she thought; on it scattered clusters of huge, thick candles. A bunch of magickal artifacts. The ankh. A cube-looking device. Some sort of glowy orb kind of like the Thessala one, but blue. Just, a lot of things. Some of them were stained; with old blood, old demon-y gore, even maybe guts, which, ew much? 

The mass of them were gathered all around a central object. A bloody, barely-breathing one. Illyria-Fred, and how was she even still _alive?_

/Oh, man; what is he _up_ to?/ 

Angel saw it too. She heard him groan, whisper the demigod’s name. The rustle as he reset himself grimly, the target back in the reticle. 

Gunn may have been his friend, but all this was just really out of control, dammit. And if he accidentally dusted Spike… 

God, if Spike would just get out of the damn _way_… /Why didn’t we split up? I could’ve come in the front door, let Angel take the back…/

Except that would’ve left him without cover, and she knew her ex couldn’t protect himself if he found them first, and now she was stuck out of Gunn’s reach, and only effing Angel had the drop on him. _Angel_.

She _hated_ feeling helpless, and maybe she should leave now, head around to the front; leap over the counter, or distract Gunn by messing up whatever he had going on his altar-thing. It all sounded like a very good plan… except that it was more than she could do to tear herself away. If something happened to Spike while she was running around the length of the whole damned strip mall…

But maybe she could still distract the jerk from here. After all, she’d managed it before with nothing but her tongue. “Hey! Charles!”

He had smelled them too, or heard them. Or at least, he hadn’t been surprised at all by Spike’s abrupt conversational entry a moment ago. Thus, his reply was relaxed; almost welcoming. “Hey, it’s the Slayer-girl. And Angel, too… or what’s left of him. Tell me, Slayer-girl; how do you keep these boys hanging around like this, even when you’re not doin’ the thing with ‘em anymore? ‘Cause I can smell Angel up there, still hangin’ around ready to watch your back, and God knows I heard enough about you from him all those years, when you two hadn’t been hittin’ it for ages. And _this_ guy…” He flicked his gaze over to Spike, grinning around his fangs. “God, that was pathetic, you know that, dontcha Spike? This moony ghost, muttering around Wolfram and Hart, talking about how you’d be out the second you had a body. Bothering Fred about it every second…” The demon-voice turned the nice young man’s tones to a mocking sing-song. “Find me a cure, Fred, _please_. I just _have_ to get back to _Buffy_. Buffy this, Buffy that…” 

/Oh God…/

He tilted his shining bald head, looking abruptly curious. “Except, when you did get your body back, you didn’t go anywhere, did you? And when you and Angel finally went to Rome, you came right back to LA with him and threw down with us. What was that all about?”

“That was my fault,” Angel called, low from behind his vantage, and Buffy was grateful to see that he had the crossbow held up in that instant so that if Gunn looked over, he wouldn’t see it. “I bullied him into staying away. I had a blood-hold over him, as his grandsire—something you wouldn’t understand, Gunn, since you killed your sire—and a had a lot of power over him after years of… imprinting.” As Buffy swiveled, staring, he winced. “He always did let me push him around. Didn’t you, Willie-boy. Learned to keep his head down around me, do what he’s told.”

Something twisted in Buffy’s stomach, roiling and sick. She didn’t want to hear this; especially now that she thought she knew what it alluded to, and why would Angel do this _now?_ Why would he choose _this _moment to try to grind Spike into the ground, when he was already in a fight for his life? /Why did I _bring_ you? Why did I _trust_ you to help me get him out?/

Spike didn’t answer, but he redoubled his efforts against Gunn, expression gone a kind of cold, fierce, dead sort of determined that Buffy knew all too well, and oh my god, he was going to get himself killed, and what had even _happened_ back there at Wolfram and Hart before they’d come to Italy? And why was Angel _baiting_ him about it? /You’re supposed to be _helping_ me, you complete bastard, not making this worse!/

Except… Angel must have known something about Spike that even she didn’t, or maybe he was passing some kind of hidden message, because suddenly Spike did something completely unexpected. He swung his arm away from Gunn, toward Angel’s voice, as if he were punching pointlessly at his distant grandsire. “Shut it, you ponce!” 

And then he ducked, as if from a phantom roundhouse being thrown.

It all happened as if in slow-motion. Gunn, coming overhand for a swing with the stake in his hand, fought to readjust. A bolt left the crossbow, whizzing directly for the enemy vamp’s breast. 

Except, in the same instant it struck, center-mass, Gunn’s stake found Spike in between the shoulder-blades.

Buffy was already moving. But it was too late. _“NO!”_ she screamed, louder than she had ever screamed anything in her life. Spike’s eyes were on hers. They were saying, ‘I’m sorry’….

As he vanished, at the same instant as Gunn began to.

Into bones and dust.

_/No no no no no…/ _

She skidded to her knees beside the pile, and she knew she was crying, screaming. Barely felt the tears streaming, couldn’t breathe as the dust of him entered her lungs; as he filled her again, like before when his skin had become a graft to her skin and…

Suddenly Spike did something completely unexpected. He swung his arm away from Gunn…

Buffy was back where she had been, another five, six feet away; heaving, crying, and what, what, _what_…

They were still there, still fighting, Angel’s voice was still ringing in the room, calling Spike “Willie-Boy” and telling him to keep his head down… /Oh!/ And Spike! Spike was still…

/The time-loop!/ Gunn had realized at the last second that he was going to dust and had done his time-loop thing!

She was moving before she finished thinking it; even as Spike moved. A little differently this time, came up to feint toward Angel’s voice like before, but his, “Shut it, Angel!” was a little less vociferous, a little more awed. And then he was ducking again, but this time tilted away, and the stake bounced off his spine before it plunged between his ribs. 

But it still made it through. 

The overhand blow fell in slow motion, Gunn’s lips drawn back over his teeth, a guttural scream issuing from his throat and his eyes already turned, yellow and filled with hate, toward the direction from which the bolt would come. He had tilted his own body a little away from Spike, so the angle was off, trying to avoid the shot… but it was enough.

Spike exploded into dust. His Master vampire’s skeleton showed through, his face there for an instant, eyes on Buffy’s before he fell… through her fingers. She had come so close… 

Gunn was gone too, but she didn’t care, it didn’t matter, nothing mattered, nothing would _ever_…

Suddenly Spike did something completely unexpected. He swung his arm away from Gunn, toward Angel’s voice; and god, they were back, they were both back again, and she couldn’t _handle_ this. Couldn’t see that again, couldn’t _unsee_ it; and she was running, already running. Sprinting to make up the distance, her chest heaving for oxygen and tears streaming down her face along with every other unmentionable, and she _had_ to get there in time this time, she had to…

“Chrissake, Angel!”

And then Spike was ducking again; but still further out this time. Tilted even further away so that this time the stake, as it came down, grazed over his spine instead of making direct contact with the hollow between his ribs. Skittered a little to bounce off his shoulder-blade, because Gunn, lips drawn back over his teeth and glaring screaming death at Angel, had also twisted too far away this time. He had had to choose. Kill his enemy, or avoid his own demise. 

He had chosen.

The bolt took Gunn below the heart, sticking out uselessly beneath the next-lowest rib, to quiver in his chest. He laughed uproariously as he turned, waving the stake at Spike. “You got anymore?” Snarled up at Angel. “How many more bolts do you have, boss-man? ‘Cause I know you load slower than molasses.” And then snapping it off, he turned and was gone, running for the front. Had Illyria-Fred’s body in his arms, door-altar, artifacts, and all, lit candles scattering by the wayside as he leapt through the glass with it. 

Buffy didn’t try to follow. She had Spike’s t-shirt gripped tight in her hands, and just _no_. Held him back as he made to go after. Spun him around, away from the conflagration already starting there, at the front of the store. Was able to do it because his center of balance was so completely off, the way he was leaning forward, intent already in leaping through the deadly blaze after the escaping vamp. And when her man whirled to face her, wild-eyed and incoherent with conflicting priorities… she slapped him. Hard, across the face. 

He stared, hand rising to cup the spot. “Buffy…”

“You made me watch you die again.”  
  
He jerked, amber eyes wide. 

She couldn’t. He was still straining a little, toward the door with its cheery, growing bonfire, the demon-brain single-minded, unable yet to shift intent. Still half-uncomprehending, riding the blood high.

Like in the bathroom.

She slapped him again, on the other side. “Twice.”

Behind them, Angel was already laughing. The bastard. 

“If. You. Ever…”

“He’s getting away. With…”

She punched him. Hard.

He went down, on his ass on the floor, nose gushing. It was wildly satisfying. She hadn’t punched him in a very, very long time. Sparring didn’t count.

He sat there on the cheap linoleum, looking up at her as if she was a stranger. “Buffy,” he whispered, bleeding all over his game face.

“You tried to leave me,” she told him starkly. “You _promised_. We promised each _other_. And then you tried to _leave_ me.” Her glare left no room for compromise or forgiveness. “You’re _still_ trying.”

Very slowly, the game face faded into William’s blue eyes, and the nosebleed fresheted over his upper lip onto even, square teeth. He was back and looking down into his lap, shame written over every line of him. “I…”

“Get up. We’re leaving.” She was disgusted with him. /Sometimes I think reawakening your thickheaded goddamn demon was the worst fucking decision I ever made./

***

They headed through the back alley toward the Plymouth, Spike trailing after her like a kicked puppy. Angel, of course, was walking with this joyful spring in his step, like he’d been given some kind of toy surprise. Buffy ignored them both to open the door. “Get in,” she told her idiot guy shortly.

“My Mercury…” he began, hesitantly.

“Leave it.” /Teach you to be a moron./ She was so not trusting him right now to drive himself. He might just come right back. 

Chastened, he slumped into the back seat first, skidded over to let her in, while Angel—who was, by the way, very clearly trying way too hard not to grin the whole time—slipped in behind the wheel and started up their ride. 

They left the four-alarm blaze behind to spread through the rest of the strip mall in the drought-desiccated city—maybe it would take out everything in Gunn’s little block-kingdom—and purred along in silence for about ten minutes till she was sure they were safe away, before she turned to check on him. He was, after all, bleeding all over Angel’s seats. 

He pulled away a little when she tried to prod at the nose, but subsided meekly at her outraged glare and let her continue her ministrations. He wasn’t seeping anymore, but he really hadn’t been able to afford the blood loss. He hadn’t exactly been at the top of his strength to go after Gunn right then in the first damned place. He was supposed to be hunting right now, the dick. “You’ll heal.” Turning away again, she leaned against the seat and closed her eyes. Crossed her arms.

She would so not apologize.

After another minute or two he started. “I’m sorry.”

She wasn’t even _close_ to being ready. “Just shut up.”

“Buffy, I…” She heard him pull in a long, slow, shaking breath. “I wasn’t thinking.”

She scoffed at that, because, duh! “Do you? Do you ever? I swear to God, Spike…” It hurt so much, felt like such a betrayal that she wanted to die. 

“How can I fix this?”

She didn’t even know, but for sure right now the best way was to shut the hell up. She led the way by keeping her own mouth shut. Best plan right now when the two of them were so very damned good at hurting each other with words.

He followed suit, because he knew what was good for him. And Angel, for a wonder, didn’t try to interject with anything smart, because he clearly didn’t want to die either. It made for a strained, silent ride back to Downtown LA, but it also gave her time to examine her own reactions. And she realized, along about when they pulled off the 110, that if she wanted to keep this, she was going to have to deal. Which meant facing him. Letting him talk, at some point. Talking back, without cutting him to shreds. Giving him some way to… What? Make reparation?

She’d given Willow that opportunity, when she’d nearly cost her Dawn. The least she could do…

It was as great a trust. And yes, he’d fucked up. But she understood. He’d been out of his mind. It didn’t excuse it, but… 

God _damn_ it, being a grownup in a grown-up relationship really sucked sometimes. “First things first. You are so not going to get any special treatment from me for at _least_ a month.” She eyed him from the corners of her eyes, saw him watching her warily. 

“I’m on the floor, is it?”

She sighed, loosed her crossed arms to rub the backs of them where they felt uncommonly cold, then dropped her hands into her lap. “Not that I think it’s the comfiest thing in the world sharing that couch with you, but no. That’s not what I meant.”

He snorted then, though it came out sounding a little bubbly through the nose. “No sex, yeah?”

She blinked at him, startled. “That would be punishing _me_. I think that sounds like a really dumb solution.”

Somewhere up toward the front of the car where she’d almost forgotten he existed, she heard a faint groan from chauffeur-land, and groaned herself, inwardly. /Why am I having this conversation in front of Angel?/

Spike ignored the interruption. “Oh. Yeah, s’pose so. Alright, Buffy… You wanna give me a hint, here? I’m at a loss.”

She shot him another sideways glance. “You broke my trust, Spike. I’m gonna need a little time.” He winced, cracking dried blood and looking crestfallen. “But.” She smiled a little and decided to hell with it. If they were going to make Angel uncomfortable, they’d already done it… and right now what was more important was healing the breach. “As far as sex goes, you might be able to earn some points back.”

Spike immediately leaped at the opening. “‘You knooow… you’ve got a willing slaaave…’” He actually put a little melody to it, because he knew he was in the doghouse, and he knew what she liked to hear from him, and _damn_ him.

“That isn’t fair.” But she couldn’t help but smile in spite of herself. 

“You’re not actually _singing_ to her, are you?” Angel demanded, sounding flabbergasted as he made the turn into the Hyperion’s lot. “Do you think that’s actually gonna _work?”_

“You don’t know the song, mate,” Spike answered, his low voice sounding incredibly hopeful.

“It’s an indie hit,” Buffy answered as the car pulled to a halt, and just watched him.

“Mutual favorite,” Spike answered very quietly, watching her in return. Waiting for a sign.

She sighed and slid toward the door. She supposed maybe she could offer at least the hope of clemency. “How does it go? ‘I know I should go, but I follow you anyway’?”

His eyes on hers were liquid, full. “‘If my heart could beat, it would break my chest’,” he reminded her quietly.

He always had been a complete idiot. But he was _her_ idiot… and she would keep him. “Okay, c’mon.”

Angel sounded mystified as he watched Spike follow her out of the car. “Wait, so that’s it? You hit him a couple of times and then all’s forgiven? Because he spouts a couple of lines of poetry at you?”

All wasn’t exactly forgiven, but the groundwork had been laid. Buffy watched Spike walking back into the hotel, shoulders slumped but a touch of spring back in his step and a two-finger salute over his shoulder for Angel, and smiled slightly. “It’s a really good song.”

“I just… I don’t get you two.”

“I know.” With the smile still intact she avoided her ex’s eyes to push off of the car and follow her guy into the hotel. “We’re different. But we work.”

“I guess so.” A little silence. 

She didn’t hear sour grapes this time. Just thoughtfulness, as if Angel had seen and heard something he hadn’t expected. Which, maybe, was of the good.

As she headed toward the doors after Spike, she thought she heard him say, in wondering tones, “You work… like two vampires.”

Which was… Well. A whole other thing. But she’d deal with that one later.

***

He was down on their couch, waiting, when she came downstairs. Head lowered, arms on his knees, hands clasped. Nose still bloodied, staring at the floor. She didn’t say anything till she was sitting beside him, and then simply waited for a moment, let the stillness do its work. And finally. “I need to know. Why?”

The question rang softly in the silence between them.

He shifted just a hair; came to life enough to look into his hands. Turned them, one after the other, as if the answers were in his palms somewhere. "When... Fred... When she was dying..." His voice was very rough, and he drew in a long, shuddering breath as if it were somehow necessary to him for something more than merely speech. "Angel tried to call for help. From anyone." The pale fingers twisted, washing over each other again and again. "Red was... gone. Somewhere..."

"Astral-travelling, I think," Buffy murmured. "Or at least, she said something once about other planes..." 

"Guess so. And Rupert wouldn't give him the time of day. 'Cause we were workin' for the enemy, yeah? Couldn't be trusted..."

/Oh, man.../ They could've helped. But the rule right then had been no contact with Team Angel unless absolutely necessary. No sharing information. It had been deemed too great a risk.

"So she... died." 

God, his voice was so broken. And what could she say? ‘I’m so sorry’ wouldn’t exactly cut it at this stage of the game. "Spike..."

"And I could’ve saved her." His tones turned harsh with self-recrimination, his head sinking deeper between his shoulders, as if he were trying to hide. Fall away forever. "If I hadn't been such a bleedin' _coward_, I coulda been with you already. You’d’ve _known_. That she was _good_. That they were all still doin' it right. They’d’ve called _me_ instead, and you would've made Watcher help, found Red for her, _something_..."

/Oh God, he's making it all his fault. This girl's death. His one friend./ "Spike, you can't know..."

"Doesn’t matter," he whispered, and his eyes found hers finally. And, oh god, they were so _tortured._ "Doesn’t matter if there was anything to do, yeah? I could’ve done more, at least, if I…” A tremor ran through him. “Wes knew it too. Gunn, maybe. Angel, they all..." The torn blue eyes shuttered. "My fault. Stayed, after. With them. In her honor. ‘Cause I knew; I owed them. Owed her. Owed my life; whatever you wanna call it. The thing I shouldn’t even have had back. Because she didn’t have to… go. And I could’ve… done more.”

/Oh my _God_./ This was the whole reason they were here. Because he hadn’t come to her and Dawn sooner, and he felt responsible. Doubly so, now, knowing she had wanted him to come all along. That she hadn’t thought him a leftover of her old life; that she definitely would have listened. So he had stayed with the team here in LA, to expiate his sin… or maybe give his unlife yet again in payment for still another perceived mistake in the name of love.

“So yeah. I went. And I'm _so_ sorry, Buffy. But I guess I just thought, like an idiot, that maybe I could fix it." His mouth twisted. "Bit late, as always. Like with Niblet, on the tower…”

“Spike.” An appalled whisper, that he always took on so much.

“Or maybe I just lost my mind a bit, when I saw him try to do her in like that, and I…"

She needed him to stop. Laid a hand on his urgently dry-washing ones, forestalling further guilt-laden confessionals. “I understand,” she murmured. “I think you’re wrong, but I understand.” Pulled in a deep breath, to be sure, in herself, that she meant it. But it was, in fact, true. “And I forgive you.”

His eyes jerked up to land, haunted, on hers. “You shouldn’t, you know. I didn’t come, before. And I left, after. Know what that… means. For you.” A self-depreciating light lit them as he canted his head a little; all self-disgust. “Know better than anyone, and I just lost my head and did it anyway.” He looked down again. “Don’t mean to be a dope, you know. Just can’t help it sometimes.” And he knocked ruefully on his boneheaded skull with the knuckles of his right hand.

“Yeah, well…” She smiled at him and, with a put-upon sigh, tugged his head down to her shoulder. “Knew what I was getting into when I came back, right? Except you had that wrong too.”

That seemed to throw him. “Which part, then?”

She smiled against the loose curls, pressed her lips against her beautiful idiot’s head. “You may not be much of a thinker, but you don’t follow your blood. You follow your heart. And that’s what I need, or I wouldn’t be here.” /Mine is just when it comes to you. Yours is… pretty much always./ “Your problem is when you try it the other way.”

He pulled away a little to regard her, a mild amusement creeping back, coupled with realization. “When I try to think, yeah?”

She cupped his face where she’d slapped him, because, damn it. Damn all of it. /We’re a mess, aren’t we. But we _do_ work./ “We have to have _some_ things in common, right?” 

She felt the fine shudder of the blood level off; the hum of tension slide away as his hands finally stilled under hers. Knew he’d closed his eyes when he turned his face to bury it in her neck. 

They sat like that for she didn’t know how long; just glad to be here. Solid. Touching. Together. 

Put right again.

***

Sometime in the ‘night’ of that day she felt it. The tension of it woke her; the desperation of his body, the thrumming in their shared blood. Her eyes opened abrupt and wide in the darkness of their basement hideaway, and she lay still in the nest of the couch, trying to parse it. The taut hardness of his body in her arms where he lay there, before her, facing the edge and looking out. Knew he was looking out, knew he was wide awake. “What?” she whispered finally because if she wasn’t going to get any sleep, she wanted to know what the problem was.

“It’s nothing, Buffy,” he whispered back, but the very timbre of his voice throbbed with a need that tugged at her. Told her he was lying through his teeth. Teeth that were, at that moment, clenched. Like his whole being.

“Tell me.”

“Go back to sleep, yeah? One of us should be.”

Sometimes he drove her to distraction just by existing. “I would, if you’d let me, but I have this damn inconvenient blood-bond, and I can’t, so out with it.”

He was quiet for a very long time; so long that she almost thought _he’d_ fallen asleep instead. When he finally did speak, it was in low, rough tones that sounded mercilessly amused and incredibly self-mortifying. “Doesn’t matter. No special treatment, right?”

She had to think about that for a few, because, just, what? But then… /Oh./ 

She rolled her eyes in the dark, abruptly exasperated… which was an odd way to feel when it came with an equal serving of heart-wrenching pain and regret on his behalf. He was in an agony of grief; missing a friend he’d seen die twice and drowning in guilt and sorrow. And, to top it off, he thought she was still holding him in some kind of purgatory, because of a betrayal for which she’d already decided he was at least eighty-percent forgiven. God, he must feel so alone right now. 

And he was terrible at feeling alone. Especially when he was in her arms. “Spike, tell me what you need.”

His answer was immediate. “No.”

/Right. ‘Cause you’ve got to keep on earning your title of grand idiot for the day, you dope. Didn’t I already tell you it was over? Or did you think I was just being nice to you because I felt sorry for you?/

Probably the latter, knowing him. So she tried again, slipping her arm down over his bicep in an attempt to pull him back over enough to get a glimpse of his face. Spike was such a physical creature, expressed everything with his body; communicated everything he felt there first. 

It was the other thing they had in common.

And right now, she had essentially told him to shut down that outlet. Just like all that last year, after… things. Which was how they’d finally figured out the other way—the one with words—using the verbose William as interlocutor. But it was a torturously awkward route sometimes, for them; while this? This was by far the more instinctive method. 

/Don’t think. Feel your way with him./ “Spike…” /Don’t go back in time. I’m sorry./

“No. Don’t deserve the consideration anyway. And besides. Did I ask, it’d be to serve you, yeah? What’s meant to be, for a bit, what I did.”

It took some reading between the lines, but she was starting to get the drift. 

“Going off half-cocked like that…”

Well, if he communicated with his body, so could she, and answer in the same language. 

Running on instinct, she pulled her hand away from his arm, ran it up under his shirt, along his back. Trailed her fingers very lightly up to his nape and back down, while his skin shuddered under her touch. And then rested them just at the rim of his jeans; a whisper of a suggestion where the skin lay vulnerable and cool and tender. 

He went incredibly still. And then rolled abruptly over onto his back to stare up at her. “I. Don’t. Deserve. It,” he told her very quietly. “You shouldn’t be the one serving me right now, after I…”

She couldn’t help it. Rolled her eyes to his face this time, as she slid the hand now up and under the front of his shirt, over his abs; till his hand slapped over it, caught her pinned there like a bug on a card. “I was mad earlier. I’m not now. If you need me…”

His eyes had gone quiet. Anguished. And yes, desperately needy. But he had it under control, with a tight rein of derision floating over the top for himself. He moved to sit up, propped on his other hand. “You want me, Buffy, I’ll see to you. Any time you want me…”

“Stop it.” She shoved him back down; managed it easily. “That’s not what I want right now, and you know it, so stop acting like you think it is. We’re talking about you.”

He turned his head away, denying her words. “We shouldn’t be.”

Alright, that was it. This penance thing was getting old. “Listen, dammit. We’re partners; or at least I thought we were. Which means we go fifty-fifty. You take care of me when I need it, and I take care of you when you do. Right now you obviously need it; so let me take care of you. Or I’m going to get a complex about our relationship.” It was only half an idle threat, couched in a slightly teasing tone. But underneath, there was, implicit, a certain seriousness. After all they’d been through, there was the awareness of the slippery slope between them. The ease of possible backsliding. Thus, everything about them was and must remain based on mutual reliance and reciprocity. Rough, sometimes, and urgent, often ill-considered. Tender, more often than not, now. Occasionally clumsy, rarely violent anymore… but always reciprocal. An even exchange. And nothing else would do if they wanted to continue to rely… and to trust.

When he spoke again, there was a shudder in his voice. “Yeah, I need you, Buffy. Need you to use me. Hard, till I forget... and then gentle me. And I don’t feel I’ve the right to ask, after what I’ve done to you. So we should just let it be for tonight, yeah?”

Her skin shivered with it, knowing now. “I can do that, if you want,” she told him, and, her fingers, loosed by his now-distracted hand, began to run up and down his chest again. “I don’t have anything here…” All the fun things they’d scrounged for such activities had been left behind in their suite in Beverly Hills, and to be fair she had only just started to get good at this. “But I can figure something out.”

The tremor in his voice seemed to spread throughout his entire body. “All I need is you. But Buffy…”

“Shh…” Bending down, she planted both hands, one on either side of his head, and caught his mouth. And when he jerked a little in a halfhearted attempt at protest, slid her knee up to very gently rock it against his crotch.

He moaned and arched to rock back against her thigh, pressing automatically, and his mouth came into hers in a helpless way that let her know all she had to know right now. “Alright,” she whispered, coming away from him, and slid her hands down to catch the hem of his shirt. Tugged it up, felt the quaking in him. He seldom looked this exposed to her eye; this small. Usually he wore his dignity as a shield; a great cloak of charisma made of old hurt and masks of self-assurance built up over decades to protect this young man beneath who needed more than he could ever ask to be given. 

More than she should ever have been entrusted with, the number of times she had tromped it into the dirt, this gift. His vulnerability. But still he gave it, to her. Watched her as she stripped off the dark shirt and dropped it lightly aside, ran her hands down his beautiful body. Bent to kiss him at the center of his chest. “Buffy…”

“I said shh.” Moving away from him, she sat back, undid his jeans. His eyes never left hers, and she couldn’t read them now. Had to slap his butt to get him moving; to get him to lift up. Peeled them off, one leg at a time, over his bare feet, then, while he just watched her with those illegible eyes, tugged her own shirt off and tossed it over the edge to join his clothes. Moved to take off her bra while he watched the maneuver, eyes glittering now in the dark, but still indecipherable. Then her jeans, her underwear, and then she was laying full-length on him. “Turn with me.”

He obeyed without a sound, his cock pressed confused and hopeful between them because it of course had no clue what was going on. And now with her laying on the outside of the narrow couch she lifted her leg to rest her knee on his hip, and went back to trailing her fingers up and down his back, up and down. Gentling him. 

He just watched. Watched for a very long moment, wordless; and then something broke in him, and he buried his face in her neck. In her hair. And began to tremble violently.

“Hold on,” she whispered to him. “I’ve got you.” 

So many times, he’d done this for her. When she’d been falling apart, or half-broken. Let her come to him, in pieces and wordless, and take from his body what she needed. Let her ask or even demand to be touched, or ravished, on occasion even close to ravaged, till she could imagine there was nothing left of her to hurt, or to feel anything at all, even with him. Till it could all go away. And he had done it; no matter what it might have cost him. And kept nothing for himself. 

The least she could do was return the favor. 

She was already wet, just holding him like this. Loved doing this. It would be enough. On her next circuit down his back she dipped lower, brushing the base of his spine, pressing the delicate bones beneath thin skin. Counted her way down his tailbone, making him quake. And then skipped past where he wanted her, ignoring his whimper of protest, to press lightly at his perineum—he writhed a little at that, and bucked against her—to cup his testicles just slightly. Felt him buck again. And while he was still distracted, dropped her hand away to touch herself. To dip her fingers in; closing her eyes to fight off the need to take care of herself, because she was already swollen and sensitive, feeling him. Feeling what he needed. Wanting it. /Later./ 

When she was slick enough she came back, and touched him. 

He jerked against her, sucked in a stunned breath. “Oh, Christ, Buffy, did you…”

“Yeah.”

“Oh bleeding God…”

She brushed him again; a little tickle, a little nudge, seeking entre. “Can I come in?” she asked, politely.

“Oh bloody Christ,” he whispered, “oh God yes…” And as he pushed to let her past he was already moving against her and making those sounds he only made when they did this; but more desperate this time, there, buried in her neck, and he hadn’t stopped talking since she’d started. “Oh Christ, Buffy, oh God, _please_, yeah, oh _fuck_…”

She moved in and out a little, and he never took long to relax when she did this, barely squeezed, he was too busy being lost, and before him she had never been able to imagine doing this to any other guy, but he _loved_ it. And he was so unselfconscious about it, which she guessed was one of the perks of having lived over a century. You found out what you liked and you either got over it and let yourself enjoy it, or you lived a long time with your issues. “Okay?” she asked, because it always seemed a good idea to.

“Can I have more?” he asked, and his entire body was quaking now. 

Honestly, not like this. “I’m going to have to move.”

He made a sound of protest, but nodded. 

She slipped her hand out, to the accompaniment of his low moan of loss, then pulled away to push him over on his back. Caught his leg and lifted it in one palm, keeping her fingers away so she wouldn’t lose the slick. God, his _eyes_ when they did this. Watching her like she was god or something. His left hand was wandering down to his cock of its own accord, but she shook her head, forestalling him. “Not yet.”

His hand dropped away immediately, slipped back up his chest to lay between his nipples. He didn’t touch those either, just watched her hopefully with occasional little ripples running through him that were just the faintest hints of him arching up. 

She smiled. He really was a good boy when he was doing what he was told. And he was very, very pretty. How had she ever thought he was anything but gorgeous?

Bending over, she kissed the inside of his thigh, just above his knee, then laying her left hand next to, but not on his cock—just to torture him a little—she trailed her right back down over the globe of his ass… and slipped very abruptly back in. Two fingers this time, with no warning.

He arched up hard against the pressure of her flat palm. “Bloody fuck, Slayer!” But it was in that good way, and this was what he’d asked for. So she shoved him firmly back down, and, bending over his body, held him still and helpless… and set to work. 

The best part about Slayer muscles when it came to sex was, you could go all night, whatever you were doing. Thighs like a metronome while you rode yourself to heaven on someone’s lap… or arms, doing this to someone, watching them go there. And she had never known, till Spike, how much fun it could be to be empowered in _this_ particular way, while he groaned and twisted under her restraining hand, and muttered what she was sure were filthy things—or maybe prayers—in a half-dozen languages. And she could swear he was sweating, before the end, when she hooked her fingers to find the spot he liked best, and he started jerking up, and his hands were scrabbling on his own chest, and he was half-screaming at her, “Please, Buffy, please, God, _please_…”

Smiling smugly, she slapped his weeping cock lightly with her palm, like giving it a little wake-up call, and he jerked, shuddering. “Go if you’re gonna, but no one’s touching you.” 

“Oh fuck,” he gasped… and that was it. He came; all over himself, without a single helping hand.

She watched him jerk and twitch in midair, fascinated at the way he seemed to go in time with her thrusts, the way she could feel the throb of his orgasm at the tips of her fingers. “Wow. That’s neat.”

“You’re… a fucking… menace…” he breathed, shaking.

“And you’re a mess.” She smirked at his belly and chest. 

He groaned a little. Lifted his head just a hair to squint down at his abdomen. Grunted and dropped back, momentarily uncaring. “Not my bleedin’ fault.”

She twitched her fingers once more, highly entertained, and his hand flashed abruptly up under his suspended leg to catch her wrist in a vise-like grip. “If you don’t bloody stop that and give me a break I’ll go spare.”

She lifted a pointed eyebrow at his cock, waving around undaunted over the results of previous endeavors. “You just looked like you were still all ready to go.”

He grunted again, head still back and buried somewhere between the arm of the couch and the hole in the corner. “Yeah, well, he doesn’t know to bow down and admit defeat. If he knew what was good for him, he’d leave off.”

She smiled fondly at the little head. “I like him. Always have. He’s enthusiastic.”

She was answered with some pithy mutterings, most of which she couldn’t make out, but she thought she might have caught ‘bloody idiot prick’ somewhere in there. 

She tugged her fingers out of him, interests otherwise captured, a move that garnered her an “Oi!” of protest. Bracing herself on her right hand, she caught said enthusiastic participant in her left and tilted her head thoughtfully. “Maybe he just feels left out ‘cause he didn’t get any attention.”

Spike surged up abruptly and caught her hips in his hands, because his arms were too damned long. “Oh no you don’t!” he exclaimed, apparently fully recovered from his earlier agonizing. His eyes were blazing. “No more attention anywhere but that quim I’ve been smelling this entire time…”

Buffy slapped his hands away and leaned casually over to fish around on the ground for his shirt. Dropped it square onto his belly. “No one’s doing anything else till I can snuggle up to you again without drowning. For God’s sake, Spike…”

He eyed her intensely as he mopped at his abdomen, then glanced down at the garment in his hand. Narrowed his eyes. “You know I don’t exactly have a wealth of shirts here, luv.”

“I know. But you can go up and look for another one topless. I can’t.” She paused. “Well, I guess I could, here, without getting arrested, but I might get attention I don’t want.”

He tossed the shirt aside and caught her hips again. “Bugger the tops. Want to do something about how much you liked rogering me.” His eyes had dropped once more, and were now steadily focused on her lower half.

“Nuhuh, Mister,” she teased, and prodded at his shoulder. “We were discussing what to do with _your_ little issue, not mine…”

A broad grin spread across his face, and he brightened as he lifted his eyes to her. “Got a solution to our problem.”

“Oh, yeah?” She was getting a little squirmy. Kind of wanted to keep the feeling a little longer… but not forever. Which meant he’d better let her go down on him and enjoy it without focusing too much on wanting him to get started on his end of the bargain. Because when he went down on her she really wanted it to take a little time, and if she could just drag this out a little, maybe she could slow herself down, or…

“Give a little, get a little, Slayer. Come on. Turn about.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

He caught his lip in his teeth and looked her up and down, surveying her now honestly _thrumming_ body. “You wanna wait, right? So come here and let me see to you, and you see to me, and you’ll be so busy tryin’ to focus on what you’re doin’ you won’t come for ages, and when you do you’ll be half out of your mind with it; I promise you.”

Just the thought of it made her ache. “I…” They’d never even tried that. Tried everything else under the sun, but somehow they’d managed to miss that. Which, in retrospect, seemed really elementary and stupid, and… “I’m not sure I can… do that without…”

“What?” He smirked knowingly at her. “Losin’ control? Sayin’ or doing something you can’t keep track of?” 

Well, yeah, that was part of it. Maybe feeling dumb, or inadequate, because she wasn’t able to pay enough attention to him, if he was… And what if she forgot, and started doing something really stupid to him, or…

“Stop being self-conscious, pet. Just come here and feel. It’s supposed to be messy, yeah? Believe me; I won’t be up to my usual standard meself…” His smirk widened, and he gnawed a little more at that lip in that way that always made her every inhibition fall right out the window. “Pretty sure we’ll still get the job done, though.”

She shivered… but let him tug her around. And it felt super awkward, that position; her rear pointed toward the back of the couch while he sort of shoved himself up with his elbows till his head was against the arm… but she was also facing the very familiar sight of his cheerfully-waving, half-satisfied cock, bobbing like it was saying, ‘Hey, long time no see!’, which was kind of cute and amusing…

And then his cool breath was wafting over her very not-satisfied and super damp areas, and that was _not_ cute or amusing. She leaned back reflexively. 

“Mm, yeah, that’s it luv, come here to me…”

She found herself holding on to the anchor that was the base of his cock and gripping a little hard when he plunged in to get into the business of it. Heard the sound he made, saw him wilt a little, and dammit, she’d already screwed up. Sprung her hand loose, opened her mouth to apologize… But then he was back to making happy noises, and he had never stalled in what he was doing, which… God, if he didn’t stop soon or at least slow down she was never going to get to him at all, and maybe she should make with the distracting, because that was just as good as an apology, right?

She didn’t try to think as she went to work, because thinking really wasn’t a thing right now while he was… Damn, this was hard when all she wanted to do was rock back into his face! Doing that made it hard to reach _him,_ but reaching him made her move away from what he was doing, which was really just unacceptable, and she was moving like some kind of stupid rocking toy…

But then somehow he did some sort of obliging shift and curled his body up even more to make up for the difference in their respective lengths, and then she was just _right there_, and then all she could manage was to move, mindlessly as she made use of her mouth and what was right in front of her in maybe the ways she normally did, maybe not? She thought maybe she was doing those feathery little upward licks he liked, but she had no clue, really, because…

It took her a minute or so before the wet fuses in her brain managed to connect enough to make her realize that she was basically doing whatever he was doing in a sort of an echo, because she couldn’t think at all; copying his rhythm, flicking her tongue when he did, matching his speed… /God!/ He kept changing it up, maybe because of what she was doing, maybe to throw her off or even to tell her what he wanted next at this point. She had no idea, but he was all over the place and it was making _her_ be all over the place, and she couldn’t _focus!_ And she realized belatedly she’d completely forgotten she had hands. Struggled to employ one while bent over on her elbows, managed a sort of one-quarter of a rhythm to match while she went on just doing whatever—she honestly had no idea what—but he seemed to like it, judging from the sounds she could hear when she could spare any brain cells to hear anything outside of what was happening to her own body. 

And he was right. Trying to focus on him, even a little bit, was slowing her down… but not for long. If anyone was getting a trophy for staying somewhat on track tonight it was him, either because he had done this before, or because she was making a hash of it, or because he’d already gotten off and _could_ focus…

Either way, he had already gotten off, and she hadn’t, which meant if she wanted to make this go anywhere before she—oh god—completely lost it, desperate measures were called for.

She may basically have no clue what she was doing right now, but she knew there was one thing she had never tried with him before now, because she’d never _had_ to. And now was the time, if any, because she was… She was already… 

Dammit. 

Hand still pumping automatically, she arched up… and swallowed him down. 

At which point he stopped everything, like she had run him right into a brick wall. “Fucking _God_, Buffy!”

/Ha!/ If this was an arms race, she had just won some points back. To hell with the gag reflex, because, /I win./ 

Of course he wasn’t going to stand for that, and suddenly his fingers were inside her, where she was _throbbing_ around him, and his thumb was on her clit, and dammit, she was going, she was…

She thought she was swallowing, automatically, to bring him off, though she wasn’t entirely sure anymore, because she was just fighting to remember how to breathe through her nose while she shook, and crushed his fingers, and moaned on him; fighting to breathe while she came and he came, and she’d never had to…

She probably only survived that through some kind of special Slayer ability. Maybe she briefly grew gills or something.

Pretty much the next thing she noticed was that she was on her side against the couch with her head on his thigh, watching with muzzy interest as his indefatigable penis considered that adventure and decided whether it was worthy of a rest or not. “Down,” she told it vaguely, and gave it a push to topple it decently back to bed. 

Spike grunted from somewhere above her. “Muscles don’t work quite like that, luv. Give him a mo’.” His fingers slid, still damp, up her thigh—where were her _legs?_—to tickle her ass a little. “Christ, when did you learn how to do that, anyway?”

“Self-defense class,” she murmured to his fuzzy groin, and trailed a finger up along the cut and over to his lower belly. The pale skin shivered, and she watched it in the almost nonexistent light from the cracked door at top of the stairs, fascinated. 

He sat up a little to look at her, so that her legs toppled to one side and fell over toward the back of the couch. “They taught you _what?” _He sounded positively outraged. “And why in the name of the holies would a bloody _Slayer_ need…”

She smiled into his pelvis. “Calm down, Spike. I was joking.” He subsided back onto the arm of the couch, deeply disgruntled in his every move as she elucidated. “I just meant that…” She shrugged a little with her free shoulder and turned over to try to see him up there. “It took a lot longer to get Riley off. I think it was because he was circumcised, maybe? I had to work a lot harder. That always worked, though, so, if I got tired…”

“Christ, what did they cut off the poor bloke, if a _Slayer_ could get tired?”

She considered it. “Well, bored maybe, not tired.”

He hesitated for a second, then, “You like it better, is it?”

“Mmm?”

She was surprised at the hesitant tone in his voice. “Thought it might be a bit weird for you, though you never seemed to mind. Know it’s not the norm nowadays, round here, and some women, you know, after Dru, have been a bit… repulsed, even.”

That sent her up on her elbow to blink at him. “You’re running around eating people and being an evil vamp, and they’re repulsed because your dick is a little different?”

He shrugged slightly.

“Wow.” She laid back down. “I mean, at first I was thrown, when I was younger…” She didn’t say a name, because they both knew who her first experience had been with. “Mostly just because I never thought about it till it happened. But it’s almost my norm now, you know…” She nudged him with her chin and smirked. “Since for some reason I keep taking up with all these seasoned vampires…”

There was a short silence from areas to the north, then, “Any more I need to know about?”

“Huh?” 

“‘All these’ seems to imply a vaster experience in vampire sex than just me and the ponce, so I thought I might ask who else you’d sampled, yeah?” But his tones were teasing.

“Well, technically sleeping with you is kind of like sleeping with two people, depending on the mood you’re in, so…”

His grunt sounded a little sour. “Well, we’ll just be glad you never slept with Angelus, bastard that he is.”

She made a face into his crotch and, disturbed, shifted up maneuver her body into the appropriate alignment to join him. “Not my first choice, no.” Settled her face into the hollow below his collarbone and prodded his chest pointedly. “You are, and shut up.”

He watched her quietly in the dark, his expression indecipherable, then sighed. “Don’t think I could love you more if I tried, you know that Buffy?” And his eyes cleared so that she could see the slow memory of pain there. “Know I don’t always show it the right way, know I can be a right idiot and I don’t deserve you. Sometimes I wonder if I really am just a default, because we’re what you’re used to, and you put up with me because compared to him I’m a bit safer, but I…”

She might, just might, slap him again. “You really need to shut up before I get mad.” She climbed fiercely up his body, got right in his face. “You are _not_ safe. You are _not_ a backup. You. Are. My. _Choice_.” What the hell did she have to do, aside from slapping him silly, to get that through his thick head? 

“Make you wanna hit me, still, sometimes, don’t I?” He was watching her again with half-amused, half-awed eyes. 

“Yeah, well, stop it.” She was shaking with suppressed violence, and she hated that she so often felt the need to express her emotions that way with him, even now. The problem being that… Dammit, the feelings he aroused in her were so vast that she had no other way to get them out than in these huge physical bursts. She used to hit him. Or to fuck him. Now… Well, she could obviously still do the latter, but they just finished that, which left her with… _“Dammit_, Spike…”

It seemed that maybe, just maybe, she was still a little bit raw. Just a hair. What with the seeing him dust, twice, and the almost not getting him back, and having to fight the replay of it somewhere in the back of her mind, on loop. And, okay, she might, just maybe, still be terrified, and only now be realizing it. Because the shaking was turning to something that might really soon evolve into sobs, and she wasn’t going to do that. She just _wasn’t_. It would be embarrassing, especially after really good sex, and that just wasn’t who she _was_, and… /What is going _on_ with you lately, Buffy?/

He tugged her down, arms around her, bracelets digging into her sides. Pulled her till her forehead was against his. “Still need to find another way, is it? Since I’m apparently never gonna stop sayin’ and doing things that’ll make you crazy?”

“Yeah,” she breathed, and wondered if maybe strangling would work, since it wouldn’t really hurt him. 

“Me too, sometimes,” he whispered, and pulled her down to his mouth.

The kissing was hard, and fast, and fierce, and he let her pour everything into it. All her frustration and her bubbling-up rage and her stymied shock-grief; over his almost-leaving her and the feel of him as he turned to dust and fell through her fingers. The feel and the smell of it that she couldn’t forget even if it somehow didn’t happen, and his stupid insecurity that she knew was ultimately her fault because she was the one who put it there, so she was really angrier at _herself_…

She was able to relax, finally, after god knew how long, and subsided against his forehead once more, breathing hard. Felt him pressed up against her again, between her legs, knew the fierceness of her response had reawoken his never-entirely-quiescent erection, but there was nothing new about that. Just waited, breathing, and let her brain and body return to an even keel… because amazingly, that had worked. Just making out, without boundaries, and nothing else, while he gave himself up to her. Gave her the room to _tell_ him, without words; and to know… that he really was here. That she hadn’t lost him. 

It had been _enough_. 

She shuddered again, but this time it was to shake off the remains of the mad and the bone-deep terror, and lowered herself to his chest. “Huh.”

“Standing invitation,” he murmured, and who knew this could be a solution, all this time? Certainly not her, when before making out had always been goal-oriented, a thing she either allowed herself, at first, with very strict boundaries as an outlet and then ran from it before she felt too much, or later, became merely a stop on the road toward far greater and darker pleasures. 

‘Me too’, he had said, and… this was a lot better than fighting, obviously. A lot better than hurting each other with words, or with fists. So if… /When, Buffy./ When they ever got to this point again… “Yeah. Standing invitation.”

His hand lifted, stroked along her back. Up and down her spine, counting her vertebra. “Don’t know why,” he whispered, “but I’m bleeding honored. So incredibly honored, Buffy, that you chose me. That you’re still choosing me.” His voice trembled a little. “Still terrifies me, every day, thinkin’ I might do it wrong; hurt you or mess it up. Even when it seems like everything’s going right.”

She knew those feels. “Especially when.”

“Yeah.”

She shifted her cheek on his chest. “Maybe we still just have to get used to good.” Turned her face up a little, to watch him, shining in the dark. He always had. “It’s scared the hell out of me since the beginning, you know. That you chose me. That you never stopped.”

It did the trick. He grinned, teeth flashing in the gloom. “Big Bad, sniffing after the lovely, sunshine-y Slayer…”

“Big Bad _marshmallow_.”

“Oi. You take that back!”

She ducked her head, opened her teeth very precisely over his nipple. “No.”

When he drew in a sharp breath, she knew she had him. “You’re evil.”

She laughed out loud in the dark.

* * *  
  
  
  
  
  
  
So... hopefully I qualify for one of my favorite one-liners in literature;   
  
"Thank S. Morgenstern for another major-league fake-out, there!"  
Wm. Goldman, genius (RIP)


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... I guess I can't shake y'all. Instead you were all, like, NICE to me about my evil plots. Oh well.   
So. We've moved out of Month Four.   
Aaaand... everything is about to go straight to... well, hell.   
Welcome to the Grand Denouement, where all the little seeds planted shall sprout.  
Well, all the ones that don't end up sprouting in Pt. 3... or Pt. 4, lol.

**The Beginning of the End:  
  
**

Cured of his brief descent into self-disgust, Spike started going out again with Angel to hunt for survivors and/or possible donors. He was even jaunty about it, instead of acting like he was doing it merely as if he felt like he _maybe_ deserved to eat again. 

Thus Buffy was inordinately proud of him when, on day 122 of their stay in Hell-A, she caught him downstairs talking with the latest two people they’d brought back, nodding and murmuring, and caught, in passing, the words, “…Actually a vampire,” from him, and the answering, “No shit, really?” from the guy, a wondering, “Wow, you mean it?” from the woman; knew that for the first time that he was actually working up to asking on his own behalf. 

So, of course, she stepped a little closer. Listened to his negotiations, because she couldn’t help it. “Yeah,” he was saying. “That was what that… face was about. When I was fighting that thing down there on Cienega.”

“I was wondering,” the woman replied, pensive.

“Yeah. I thought you were a little growly, like a pit bull, but wasn’t sure if I was imagining it. Everything happened so fast, you know, man?”

“Yeah.” Spike sighed and leaned back against the chair, clearly uncertain where to take it from there. 

/Don’t wimp out, Spike, c’mon./

“So, uh… Don’t take this the wrong way, but what do you, uh… eat around here, bro?” the guy asked finally, because there was a god, and they’d decided to give Spike an in.

Spike looked like he wasn’t sure if he was glad or sad for it, but he shrugged. “Been on an… abbreviated diet for a few years, since I… ah… reformed. Don’t wanna hurt anyone. Used to take old blood from hospitals. Buy it from butcher shops, you know. Pig’s blood, but that really doesn’t do it for us. Makes us weak, eventually.”

“None of that around here anyway,” the woman cut in, looking upset. “Neither one. So what? You just starve?”

Spike shrugged with exaggerated casualness. “Live on donations, mostly. Little bit here and a little bit there. My lady gives me some, but she can’t keep me going all on her own. It’s tough to stitch together, but it’s better than going back to what I used to do.”

It was a candid assessment, and it left out all the fine print. The heartache. The reasons. And the punch line.

_“Orale,”_ the woman whispered, sounding nonplussed. “Lalo, you ever think we were gonna meet a good vampire in this place?”

_“Mija,_ I never thought I’d meet a vampire, period.” He frowned at Spike. “People give you blood like, what? With needles and all that shit?”

Spike snorted. “Do you see any of that around here?”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Then how do you…”

Spike tapped his teeth lightly with one finger, a slight conspiratorial light in his eyes. 

“Bro, you’re kidding. That’s for real?”

“Well, not with these. That’s where the funny face comes in.”

God, he was taking forever, dancing around it. Buffy was dying to just march in there, show off her neck, and ask them if one of them wanted to give it a shot. But she restrained herself. She wouldn’t micromanage him. This was his show.

“And people just let you, what? Bite on ‘em?”

Spike shrugged. “Been known to. Some of ‘em have become right fond of me; or at least they’ve decided they don’t want me to starve.” He shrugged. “It’s a weird world, yeah?”

“Yeah, man.”

He stood, stepped away. “Take any rooms you want. Get some rest.”

He was going to let it sit. Let them perk on it. Which Buffy supposed was as good a strategy as any, and they’d done it before, at Beverly Hills. Granted, back there he hadn’t gone eleven days or whatever without eating—not counting sips from the Buffy to keep him going—so that kind of patience had its place back home. But if this is how he wanted to play it…

Really, she was just super proud of him for starting the conversation on his own at all. If they wanted to come to her and ask questions now that he’d planted the seeds, she would for sure answer them, but this was a really big step for him. Of course, part of his uncertainty and reticence probably came from the weirdness, because no doubt it felt super cumbersome and unnatural for a vampire in the first place, begging for what his demon felt was his by right (want, take, have, and all that). 

The whole thing was just awkward. So yeah, maybe it was bizarre to him, but the entire dimension was weird, okay? And she _was_ proud. Probably as a Slayer she _shouldn’t_ be proud of a vampire for negotiating for biting rights, but in this case, she couldn’t really help it. So shoot her.

The next ‘day’ the woman came up to her while she was standing by the front desk. Spike had just walked away after nuzzling at her neck, which meant Buffy had barely noticed they were being watched (or, really, that there were any other people in the entire hotel) until after he left, she was so absorbed in what he was doing. But then… all the sudden, there this chick was; standing right in front of Buffy, looking a little nervous, but really curious. “Um… hi.”

Maybe about late thirties, a little shorter than Buffy, kind of shy-seeming. Interesting that she was the one who’d stepped forward, and not the guy. “Hi… Dorice, was it?” 

“Yeah. So. He’s your man, huh?”

She turned her head to watch Spike head outside for a smoke. Smiled. “Yeah.” 

“And you, um… Let him…” The tentative tones dragged her attention back. “I mean, when he’s hungry, you, um, give him…”

Lifting her hair, Buffy tilted her head to the side to show off his bite. She was careful to only show the good scar—Spike’s scar—and not the ragged, four-layered one on the other side. That hot mess might deter the prospective donor. Luckily she wasn’t doing the ponytail thing today. 

“Wow. That’s, like… hardly a thing.”

She felt her lips lift in spite of herself. “No, it’s… It heals fast. He doesn’t take much. Like giving blood at the hospital or one of those donation places.” She dropped her hair again and shrugged. “Feels a lot better, too.” Might as well get her part of the sales pitch in while she could.

That earned her another blink of surprise. “It feels… good?”

Buffy lifted her eyebrows. “Oh yeah.” And she invested the second word with a little exhale that wasn’t entirely feigned. “I mean… if you’re into that kind of thing.” /And if you’d asked me even a year or two ago, I’d have said I was never gonna be one of those people, but, you know, she who doth protest too much, or however the saying goes…/ She shrugged it off. “Kind of like how you hear some people really get addicted to getting tattoos.” /If they’re not being put on by a skeezy, unskilled sorcerer trying to turn you into Eyghon-fodder, anyway./ “Endorphins or whatever…”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Dorice mused in answer, sounding like she’d been hit between the eyes. “I thought it would be like this… thing you’d have to put up with. I had an IV once, and that felt _muy gacho_, you know?”

“Yeah, but those stay in and just sit there, and the saline or whatever feels so cold. This is this _pulling_ feeling… and…” She shrugged. “Vamps have this natural ability to make you feel… drawn in. It’s a predator thing. Spike uses it to make you feel… wanted. The center of the universe when he bites you. It’s…” She halted, because there was no need to cross the line; to describe the many variations on the long road between biting, biting addiction, sex, and thrall. “It’s different,” she finished, shrugging nonchalantly once more. “Kind of its own thing.” /And I’m really not gonna tell you how sensual it is, because that’ll probably scare you off./

Dorice nodded, looking seriously thought-provoked. “That’s… crazy. Huh.” She kind of wandered off after that, toward the chairs across the lobby, but her expression was half-decided already. 

/We have a winner./

They did. Dorice volunteered for Spike later that day, to Lalo’s dismay. “Sis, you seriously gonna do this?”

_“Hermano_, he saved us. And he needs to eat. And I think it means… a kind of communion, you know? The Son of God turned the wine into blood for us all to drink, saying we were drinking of him; so when we go to church we’re all doin’ it. So what makes him so wrong?”

Spike lifted his eyes to Buffy’s over the woman’s head, and she read the message there clear as day. ‘Oh please…’ 

If Dorice was wearing a crucifix, Buffy prayed it wouldn’t touch Spike during the proceedings. It’d start sizzling on him, he’d de-fang mid-feed, and that’d tell their guests all they needed to know about this particular ‘communion’. 

Besides; once the thing started getting donor-lady all turned on, then what would she think, if she was starting to make this all religious or whatever in her head? Would it make her think it was really a bad thing?

Actually, what ended up happening though, was Dorice apparently had some kind of orgasmic religious experience from being bitten, to her brother’s total embarrassment, and he hustled her out afterward and tucked her away in her room so she could get herself together… and basically avoided talking to them thereafter until Connor drove them up to Silver Lake. 

Dorice didn’t, though. She left watching Spike with shining eyes and fingering her cross, because, woah.

Downstairs, afterward, Spike stood facing the wall roaring raucously to himself while Buffy tried to help him to take the edge off; fending her off and just laughing, laughing, till she demanded to know what the hell was so funny. 

“She’s in hell, Buffy. She’s been bitten by a vampire, in _hell_, and she thought she'd met Christ. It’s too bloody ironic; the poor bird probably hasn’t had an orgasm in her life before, oh fucking God…”

He got her laughing too, before the end, and alright, so that was the first time they ever had sex while giggling and chortling and snorting and tripping over themselves the entire time, but whatever. As long as no one got hurt.

This dimension was seriously random.

***

Buffy was upstairs the next ‘day’ when the atrium doors banged open without warning, making her jump. “I have heard that the vampire Gunn has taken our friend Illyria captive.”

Buffy had to admit to being surprised at Groo’s reappearance. “What’re you doing back here?”

Groo seemed taken aback by her query. “I have heard that the vampire Gunn has taken our friend Illyria captive,” he repeated, as if this explained basically everything. 

“Oh. Right.”

“Was your hearing damaged in the blast?”

“What, now?”

“I am concerned, Champion Buffy, because you seemed not to have understood me, and I have also heard that he had some weapon with him which was capable of causing an explosion…”

“What? Oh. No, I just…” Groo could be the most literal person in the entire universe. Seriously. “I’m fine. So, you want to help do something about it?”

Groo appeared confused. “I do not understand why Illyria has not escaped already. She is more powerful than this vampire. Or what he would wish from her. But yes, I would like to help.”

“She changed back into Fred when she saw him. I guess because they used to know each other so well. And then he wounded her; pretty bad, too.” In her mind’s eye she saw it again; the twisted metal, streaking down. The blood, spurting. Gushing. So much blood. “And we really don’t know…”

“Something about turning back time, I think,” Angel broke in, swinging into the room from the office. “Hey, Groo.” 

“Angel. It is good to see you.”

“Yeah. Same here. You wanna throw in on this one?”

“I am ever at the service of the friends of Cordelia.”

“You know,” Buffy heard herself say, “I am really starting to wonder what it was about Cordelia that made everybody so in love with her, because I _really_ didn’t see it.”

Groo swiveled to stare at her as if she was some kind of madwoman. “Then you did not know her.”

Angel sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair. “She changed a lot, Buffy. She wasn’t the same person you knew in high school.”

/I guess not. But then, we all changed a lot./ Anyway, far be it from her to diss the woman Angel was so hung up on, if she wanted him to stop treating Spike like crap, so… “Makes sense. Wes sure did.”

Angel nodded a little, though his face tightened. 

“You knew many of our lost friends in another life, it seems, Champion Buffy.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a small world.” Feeling a change of subject was probably in order before she put her foot in her mouth some more and wrecked Angel’s soul completely, she shot him a redirecting sort of glance. “I’m assuming Gunn wants Illyria to turn back time to when we came here, not to when we were all less mature versions of ourselves? Or do you think he’s trying to turn her back into Fred permanently or something?”

Angel sat down heavily in the nearest seat, looking pained. “I think we need to talk to Betta George. He was the one who spent the most time around the guy while he was collecting all those artifacts and things.”

Good point.

Spike, who had just descended the stairs in Buffy’s wake, tilted his head askance. “I think he’s still over at the Biltmore, enjoying the fruits of sweet freedom and staying the hell away from any place Charlie-boy might show. Doubt you’d get him to come here, but if we wanna do another interview, he’d probably oblige.” Pale fingers twiddled convulsively against the top of a jeans-pocket. I’ll drive, if we’re going. Got to look for more fags anyway.”

Buffy did her best to keep her tolerant amusement to herself. Aside from the excuse to get out and steal more cigarettes, her guy was just dying to try out his new wheels. He’d gone out and scrounged another car from somewhere in the last few days; a ‘58 Impala this time (black, of course), because he was predictable as hell when it came to cars. Not that she would tell him that.

Angel looked askance. “I can drive the Plymouth.”

“No dice, Peaches. We can get everyone in the Impala. Everyone who’s going, anyway; and it’s a lot prettier.”

“The Plymouth is a GTX! And it’s a convertible, which is more than I can say for that rust-bucket you…”

“Boys, boys…” And they had been getting along so well. “Drive separate cars if it’s that big a deal to you. As long as we get there.” She swore sometimes it was like being a mom to a couple of recalcitrant toddlers picking fights over toys. /Well, one toy./ 

She was just glad that they had mostly cut it out. But the habit of needling each other over inconsequentialities was apparently nearly impossible to break by this late stage of the game. “Though, I don’t see why we can’t just walk. It’s, what? Maybe a mile?”

They turned as one to stare at her, clearly appalled at the suggestion. “And miss the drive?” Spike demanded, floored.

“It’s such a nice _day_ out,” Angel agreed, almost in tandem and practically whining.

And, just like that, friendsies again. 

They really were a couple of incomprehensible idiots.

In the end they took the Impala, if only because Spike insisted that he needed to “take her for a spin to see how she goes”, which apparently Angel decided, really abruptly, was an excellent use of the ‘morning’. Even though he complained the entire time about having to sit in back with Groo instead of up front where he would “have more leg room”. 

Buffy, with her shorter legs, gave him plenty of it, just for the record, but she was so not going to give up her permanent position as Spike’s shotgun. Definitely not when switching would mean listening to them tiff like little children the entire way… and had Angel always bitched this much?

Spike, though, seemed to be in a wildly magnanimous mood, now that he’d won. At his stop at one of the less-recently-ravished gas stations along the way, he offered Angel a Morley, which earned him a look down Angel’s long, patrician nose. “I don’t smoke anymore, Spike, and you know it.” 

“Oh, c’mon, pops,” he mumbled around his own cigarette, and lit up. “Live a little.” Leaned back against the car like he had stepped back into about 1997, and inhaled deeply. Blew out his lungful of smoke right into his grandsire’s face like he was trying to tempt him or something; and Spike acting like he was the impatient, insouciant demon-child of old really shouldn’t amuse and, okay, turn her on the way it did, should it?

Also… Seriously, when had Angel smoked? 

What even _was_ this?

Groo, watching with her from the back seat, seemed nonplussed by the entire thing. “Do they always act like very small children when they are together?” he asked her in an aside.

“Really, they do,” she informed him sadly, and tossed an old, sun-bleached Tootsie-Roll wrapper out of window of the car. “I think they think it’s cute or something.” And she leaned out of the window to say, a little louder and more pointedly. “But it’s not.”

Smirking around the cigarette, Spike snapped his refilled Zippo shut and turned around with his usual animal grace to circle the bumper and step back into the driver’s seat. The off-color light of hell lit his hair with a slight tangerine sheen, and Buffy noted with surprise that there was the faintest hint of what might even be dark roots showing beneath the bleach-blond. “Coming, Peaches?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Wow, vampire hair took a seriously long time to grow out. She hadn’t even really thought about it, but he hadn’t had to touch up the dye-job at all since they’d come here, and it hadn’t seemed to have gotten any longer at all till, well... now. Which... Now that she thought some more, he’d only had the tiniest amount of dark roots going on down in the school basement, before, and he’d been gone for months, then. And now that she was paying attention, his normal platinum shade had kind of faded with wear and tear to a more ‘light honey’ she recognized from when he’d come back from Africa, and huh. /Good to know./ At this rate it would take him literally _years_ to change his hairstyle, if he ever decided he wanted to. No wonder he’d found something he liked and decided to stick with it. And jeez; no wonder vamps didn’t grow beards. That was, if they were clean-shaven when they died, she supposed. There had been that one biker vamp with the beard down to his belly-button or whatever, that one time, which she supposed kind of counted as an investment post-death.   
  
Jerks like that were probably in for a rude awakening if they ever cut the things off and then decided to try again.

Cigarette snugged between the fingers of his left hand, Spike tapped the steering wheel to some music only he heard, and slipped his right hand down to cup her thigh in mute appreciation for her presence. She covered it with her own, grateful as ever for the easy touches and the silence of them. And found herself wondering what it would be like to spend time with a Spike who had William’s soft, honey-brown curls. /Will you still feel like the same Spike, to me, if we’re here that long? Or will I end up calling you William way too often, now I’ve seen him? Now I know how much of Spike was already in you then, and how much of William has always been in you, since. How much it was never about being a different guy; nothing lost, just... changed. Like a caterpillar into a butterfly, but still the same being at heart; except now you can fly./  
  
/How long did you go by William, before you were Spike? How long was your hair that color, before you started to change it? Because you probably couldn't, for at least half your existence. So how much does any of that matter, really, to who you are?/ So many things, she had never wondered before now, in this place and time. She stroked his thigh with her fingertips, watched his ever-mobile face as he drove. /Because it doesn't change who you actually are, inside. It didn't then, and it won't now. How you are, who you are to me./   
  
His thumb stroked lightly at the webbing between her thumb and forefinger, the same temperature as the ambient day, and yet cooling her in the ever-present, suffocating heat of her own over-cooked self. /But... there're so many things I don't know, still, about you. And I want the time to know. To prod them out of you./ 

It would be an interesting game, to let it slip enough for long enough to see how long it took him to realize something was up, and why. No doubt if she did so for a little while, he’d eventually get all sarcastic and ask her to help him bleach his hair back into submission. /That is, if we can afford the water to do it by then. Which, probably doubtful, so maybe a bad game./ But it would be a way into the conversation.

Heck, maybe he already knew what his hair was doing. He knew his own body, no doubt, after a hundred-plus years, knew how long it took for his hair to grow out. Upon reflection, he was probably well-aware, and had just given up worrying about it, because spending that precious resource on something like self-image would be… what was the word he’d used about the baths? ‘Profligate’. /Which means, no teasing. Bad game, Buffy. He doesn’t mess with you over your hair, which, let's be real, is probably an awful, dried out mess of split ends by now./ Instead, he still acted like her fried tresses were a shrine or something. 

She supposed it was possible, what with everything, that he just hadn’t even noticed his hair sitch yet, since it wasn’t like he could see himself in the mirror. Not to mention that things had been too nuts for him to have spent a lot of time thinking about it. /Probably he tries not to think about his hair at all, since he can’t gel it. And it’s not like it’s a priority./ But his image was, for her. She got how it felt to not feel your best; how important the little things were. So… it really kind of sucked that they couldn’t do much about it. Because with the water shortage thing, he was kind of in the same camp as she was when it came to styling.   
  
He couldn’t even do his nails anymore. They’d been out of polish for weeks, and hadn’t had time to scrounge more. If it weren’t for the eyeliner, he’d look utterly naked.

The whole thing kind of blew now that she really considered it, because the thought of getting to play ‘salon’ with Spike’s soft curls—the dye, the conditioner, him surrendering to her ministrations—made her smile, made her itch to get her fingers into his hair and really work them into his scalp, to watch him shiver in pleasure…

And what would it be like to have him do hers? Give her a hot oil treatment, maybe? Tilt her head back over a tub and just run some cool water down over her hair, massage out the grit, work her scalp while she moaned with the pleasure of it... 

Spike must have noted her eyeing him, or felt the twinges of her little moment lost in fantasy, for he lifted a brow in her general direction, clearly curious. “Somethin’ on your mind, pet?”

“Oh. No. Just thinking.” /Or maybe making _plans_./

“If you ever care to share…”

She let the easy smile drift his way. “You’ll be the first to know.”

“All I ask.” 

/S’pose that means I have to tell you that you’re kind of two-toned. And that I’m having some very serious reconsiderations about all things bathroom. Except you probably have no idea that I’ve been way past having said reconsiderations since along about when I realized we had this great tub sitting over there in Beverly Hills and no way to use it, and, yanno. That’s every kind of stupid, so…/

Maybe they could locate and raid another water source. There were always new and better filtering projects. God knew they needed hobbies to pass the time in this place.

She eyed him thoughtfully as he drove, and contained her scheme deep within the recesses of mind and breast. It could wait. An experiment, to see how long before he’d notice her little preparations, that she was plotting designs on his person, and scheming ways to coerce him into having designs on hers… 

/Course, if we’re here long enough for him to go all brunet, we’ll eventually run out of food, which is a whole other problem./ 

That sobering thought kind of put a kink in the warm-happies.

Once they reached the Biltmore, the guys were all business once more, every ounce of whatever that establishing-dominance play of theirs had been vanished as if it had never occurred. For which fact Buffy was grateful, because she just simply did not have the patience to wrangle them if they decided to resume hostilities. She was far too relaxed now from her little in-car mental movie-reel.   
  
“Hey, ladies,” Spike called as they swung into the wide, oak-floored space with its vast, gorgeous oriental rugs and carved crown moldings. 

The three baby Slayers, who had clearly felt him coming, glared in simultaneous, unwilling welcome. “What?” Nicole asked flatly.

“We need to talk to Betta George,” Buffy informed them, bringing the meeting to heel before things could go sideways. Despite their having fought side-by-side and even lived close by to Spike for a very long time now, the slayerettes had never entirely relaxed around him; probably partially because he still fed from people, willing volunteers or no. And because of her having so openly helped with that, and because of the scars she never bothered to hide on her neck and thighs, she was well aware that they weren’t exactly sure what to make of Buffy either, fellow Slayer or no.

She knew from the way their eyes flickered uneasily from Angel to her to Spike and back again that they also had zero clue where to slot her ex into the equation. Seeing and feeling him turn from vamp to not-vamp as the spell melted away had really messed with their minds. 

They liked Groo, though. Found him straightforward and attractive enough; or at least all but Tonya did. Buffy had her suspicions that Tonya was gay, though attracted or no she appeared to find Groo harmless. “He’s upstairs,” the latter girl filled in, jerking a thumb toward the wide, curving balustrade off to one side of the useless bank of elevators. “In the piano lounge.” She nodded to Silver Lake's pretty Champion, but otherwise remained as uncommunicative as her pals. 

Man, they needed therapy. Not that Buffy blamed them, with the mess this dimension had probably made of their minds. /If we ever get out of here, we might have three rogue Slayers on our hands. They sure the hell don’t trust _me_./ Which no doubt meant that trusting any suggestions she made as to joining the Organization—much less trusting any training they might provide—was a crapshoot. Hell, they had flat walked away from any invites from Buffy, thus far, to train together. /Serious rogues in the making./ And what a lovely thought that was, considering all they had seen, and all they knew.

Bypassing the sadly non-working elevator, the delegation ascended the stairs to the high Biltmore Tower and turned into the vast Piano Lounge on the second floor. The wide, richly carpeted room with its railed dais sported a big, black grand piano in as its showpiece, six burgundy steps up from the main floor under a set of three cream arches and in front of arced windows filtering light from the streets. It was baroque, gorgeous, and Buffy honestly believed that part of what she loved so much about being in this dimension was that she got to live and spend time in places like this that she otherwise would never have seen, much less visited regularly in her harried and burger-slinging life. /When all order in the world falls apart, demons and demon-slayers come out to play, start movin’ on up…/ 

Hadn’t she read somewhere in one of her brief flirtations with actual studying that the Whirlwind had denied a spot at the side of the Master down underground because Angelus and Darla had wanted to spend their time painting the town and living it up? She shot a glance over at Angel, whose eyes were now facing steadily forward without the least apparent appreciation of their surroundings. Back to Spike, who seemed similarly unaffected by the gorgeous richness of their current setting. /Well, sure. If you got raised in it./ Though… Why had he spent so much time in factories and crypts, afterward, if he’d gotten used to such opulence and… 

/Oh./ Because that had been Angelus’ and Darla’s thing; probably because they _hadn't_ had it as humans. And, probably also because William _had_ grown up in high class surroundings... and, rebel that he was, as Spike he had turned his back on all of that afterward; and doubly so when they’d up and left their progeny to make do on their own. /You always had to be different, huh? From them, and from who you used to be./ 

That was her guy. Dirty and wicked and punk and street. Big Bad, embracing the nightlife; taking on the world in his own way and making it his, on Spike’s terms.

Well, that, and he’d had Drusilla on his hands. Probably a little harder to keep her under wraps when she was aboveground wrecking the place when she was in a snit, or leaving bodies around to rot on the furniture because she’d had some kind of vision. 

She dropped her hand briefly to Spike’s, wondering just how tough it had been to take care of a crazy person for a hundred years, left all alone and abandoned by, essentially, his parents, while Darla went back to the Master and Angel just wandered off to do whatever the heck it was he’d done between getting his soul and finding her. Aside from, Buffy assumed, eating a lot of rats and huddling in corners. God, that must’ve taken a lot of totally adaptable DIY and a fuckton of sheer devotion, and no wonder Spike was so good at loving her through all of her crap and taking her as she was. Loving Drusilla had been his training wheels for putting up with a volatile, self-hating Slayer with a Mack truck of baggage. 

Hell, maybe she’d been a party in comparison. Same kind of regular violence, same kind of bizarrely mercurial affection without actual love, same pining over the same lost ex, same ‘take what you can get and love anyway’ mentality. /You devoted nut./ Only difference was, he had been able to be himself with Dru. Be a vamp. Party and take blood and kill when he’d wanted to. 

/But at least with me there isn’t all that random insanity to parse. Most of the time./ “I love you. And you’re amazing.”

Spike turned to her, regarded her steadily for a moment as if her pronouncement had taken him off guard. “Not that I mind hearin’ it, luv, but what brought that on?”

She shook her head to push it aside, let her fingers tickle out to catch the hand, pull it into hers. “Nothing, really. Just thinking.” /I’ll tell you later./

He watched her for a moment, eyes assessing, then nodded and turned back. But his hand squeezed hers in grateful appreciation as they headed toward the piano’s dais. For there, hovering off to one side behind the far-left pillar in the corner, Betta George floated in the shadows looking out one of the gauze-curtained windows into the coral morning. 

\--Hey, guys,-- he bubbled as they approached. --What’s up?-- Though his ‘voice’ indicated, of course, that he already knew the gist of their agenda.

“We were kinda hoping you might know more about Gunn’s plan,” Angel answered without preamble, because he knew it too.

George sighed like a snorkel and turned back to his window. --He took your Old One.--

Spike trembled briefly against Buffy’s arm, whether in anguish or with that ever-present need to be gone, doing something about it. She clung the more tightly to his hand, offering comfort and the reminder that they would. Just not now.

George’s large, unblinking, wet-looking eye rolled back to take in their interaction, settling firmly on Spike. --She’s unlikely to be dead. He needs her to accomplish this whole ‘grand design’ of his.--

The shudders eased. “Yeah? What’s that?”

The fish-demon managed to appear regretful, somehow. --I don’t know all of it. I think he tried not to think about it around me, but I know he thinks this Illyria of yours has the power to create a bigger time-loop than he can. I’m just not sure how he thinks he can force her to do it without me around to…-- 

He trailed off, waggled one fin to indicate the use of mental mojo.

Buffy frowned at that. “Well, I mean, she can, obviously?” Scanned Angel’s stunned expression. Spike’s. Whether she could control it or not was a crapshoot, but judging from what they’d all experienced before Gunn had nabbed her, it was clear that manipulating time was very much within Illyria's sphere of influence. “Based on what we all went through… And she _is_ kind of a god, right? Maybe not to the level of a hellgod like Glory would’ve had if she wasn’t stuck in a human body, but isn’t it the human body that has her all… restricted to demigod status?”

Angel shook his head. “That’s just it. She’s stuck in a human body. Even Jasmine had more powers than she does.”

“Jasmine?”

“Never mind.”

Spike scoffed, as if deriding this short dismissal.

_“Anyway_,” Angel rode on, “all I’m saying is, whether she did before, I don’t think she has that kind of power right now. Not to face down the Senior Partners’ whole system here in such a regulated way. You all saw the way she jumped us around. It was completely uncontrolled…”

Spike muttered something that sounded like, “Bloody eighties,” which, what? When had he gone to the eighties? Buffy had, in her foray back to her own childhood, but that hadn’t been a trip that had included Spike in it. 

“He’d have to somehow get her out of Fred’s body,” Angel went on, “and if he did that she’d just die, right?”

Buffy was still feeling significantly out of the loop, considering at least one of the comparisons on the table here was someone she had never heard of. “No, hold up. Who’s Jasmine? Another Old One? How many of these demonic god-beings do you know, anyway?”

Angel looked constipated. It was a look she knew well. A patented, ‘Angel’s trying not to tell me something because he’s protecting me, or maybe himself, from me knowing something’ look. “Are you _kidding_ me?” she demanded finally.

Spike’s voice took on that smug tinge that said he was thoroughly enjoying Angel’s sudden discomfiture. “Best tell her, Peaches. She’ll make life hell for you till you do.” And he casually popped a new cigarette between his lips and cracked the Zippo between his palms to light up. Some kind of victory dance, Buffy thought, and considered washing her hands of the both of them.

Angel looked away. Sighed heavily, and stared into his palms for a second as if searching there for a script. “Cordy…" he half-whispered finally, "didn’t die because the visions put her into a coma. She died because she took some time off to be the Powers’ messenger for us, but a demon god hijacked her before she could do it. It was part of…" He faltered and lifted tortured-looking eyes to Buffy's. "See," he began again, and now he was doing his 'making excuses' voice, "there was this prophecy, and…” He looked at his toes and hunched his shoulders; the Angel pose of extreme discomfort. “Anyway, the demon kept her from doing anything useful, so she got bored. She wanted to come back, be helpful. So she… fell, back to us, but They took her memories so she couldn’t tell us too much about our futures, and she came back all confused. But…” His voice faltered. “She’d also picked up a hitchhiker. The demon-god I mentioned. Powerful, like your Glory. Her name was Jasmine. She…” He trailed off, agony etching his entire being. 

“His bird got eaten up from the inside, luv. Like Fred. The godbitch used her to give birth to itself; to escape the Powers’ dimension. It’s what put her down, in the end.” 

/Oh. My. God…/ It made so much more sense than what she had been told. And the thought of someone as vital—and, credit where it was due, pure-bitch-powered—as Queen C, hollowed out by some Glory-alike, ridden around like a horse, forced to give birth to a thing like that and rendered comatose by it, was horrifying. Like... she had been killed in her sleep! The very thought was terrifying to Buffy. A woman like her should have at least had the chance to die on her feet. 

Buffy may never have seen eye to eye with Cordelia Chase, but she could at least recognize that the woman had been a warrior in their mutual fight. 

And the way she had gone. Basically, she’d been Ben, her life ruined by some uncaring fucking demon demigod, except Ben’s fate had been thrust on him from birth. Cordy had been trying to do the right thing. Fight the good fight, and it had all been turned around on her. What kind of sick Powers would allow such a travesty on one of their own messengers? 

Did those bastards even _care? _“How… What kind of…” She found herself staring at Angel, flicking her gaze back to Spike, though she half didn’t want to know. “How did this Jasmine even… get _in_ her?” Just the thought of that kind of invasive…

She had never really considered what it would be like to be pregnant. Not really. But put in those terms…

/Just Oh My _God_./

“Used that little shit Connor as daddy material while the chit was still in amnesia territory.” Spikes tones remained flat as he answered, but it was clear that he, too, thought it was not exactly the finest way for a fighter to go. 

“She was possessed!” Angel bit out. “It wasn’t her!” But the anguish in his face was agonizing to look at. And it explained so much; about Connor and his confusion over the Cordelia thing, and… 

/Oh, wow. Oh _man_…/

“They put her down, finally, but the girl didn’t make it out.” Spike shrugged one shoulder. “It all happened along about when you’d just come back, a bit before our tussle with The First.” His voice turned wry. “Hell of a year for everyone, that one.”

Which begged the question, and Buffy rounded on Spike. “How the hell do _you_ know all this, if I don’t?”

Angel’s eyes were shut. His entire being; closed off. “I… asked a mage from Wolfram and Hart to wipe everyone’s memories of all of it. For Connor’s sake. So he could have new memories of a new family and a new life. Forget about being raised in a hell dimension by a demon-hunter who hated me, forget that he’d slept with Cordelia and tried to kill us all. Forget everything.” His voice took on a note she knew well; the weight of accustomed guilt and shame. “Signed us all over to them; me, Wes, Gunn, Fred, Lorne, all of them. Everyone on the team. To save my son.” He didn’t dare to meet her eyes. “But when Fred… When Illyria was…” He swallowed. “Wes… shattered an artifact thinking it would help her. It didn’t, but everyone who was there got the memories back.” Still steadfastly avoiding her gaze, he shrugged. “I guess it’s been leaking ever since we got here. But it hasn’t touched anyone who never knew the whole truth about…” He came to an abrupt halt.

/Who never knew about Connor. All the ins and outs about it./ She had been right all along in her suppositions. Spike would have known, because Connor was of his vamp bloodline. He would have felt the kid arrive, leave the dimension, come back. She knew he could feel Angel’s son by the way he had picked up his head whenever the young man entered the Pink Palace on his refugee runs. ‘Like a pale echo of a vamp’, he’d told her once. /He would’ve asked Angel about the new entry to House Aurelius./ 

She really did get why he hadn’t told her, though she was still kind of impressed that he hadn’t used it as a way to score one over on the vamp he hated most; if only as a way to make his grandsire look bad in Buffy’s eyes while their one-sided affair had ground terribly on toward its eventual demise. But with everything so on edge between them in that godawful year, and without a single ounce of trust, Spike of all people would have known that hearing something like that might have pushed her even further over the edge into depression, or into blaming the messenger.   
  
He wouldn't have wanted to risk her hating him even more for being the one to bring her the news.

So he had held back from telling her. And then Connor had been gone, and it had probably felt like it didn’t matter anyway. And anyway, it wasn’t like it was Spike’s place to mention it. But that Angel hadn’t told her… 

She knew now, for a fact, that his motivations were as much to save a child he loved more than he would ever love anyone else. Connor was, understandably and rightly, the real and true love of his life; the person who had motivated him to make decisions that had nothing to do with morality. Buffy got that. For Dawn, she had been ready to say ‘fuck the world, I quit, the whole damn thing can go to hell, I’m not killing her’. She got it, she really did, got that it wasn’t really all about her and their past and Angel wanting to save his image in front of her. But it still sucked to know that he had thought she couldn’t handle the truth, hadn’t been up to the pressure, or capable enough to carry her own weight in such a powerful secret, such a big part of her ex’s life. That they hadn’t been friends enough at that point or important enough in one another’s lives that he might trust her with the information that he had had a child. That she hadn’t had a chance to… to celebrate with him such a massive milestone. /Yes, I was screwed up, and busy, but I could’ve handled knowing. Maybe I could’ve helped. But you didn’t want my help, didn’t want me to know you./  
  
/You never did, did you?/

Or maybe he had just thought she was too fucked up by then to cope with the information?

She struggled with it, fought to make it not all about her, or them. /He did it for his son. He did it for his son./ The internal chant was the only thing keeping her from walking right out the door at that moment; or maybe flying at him. Because, just… how many times had he lied to her, or taken her memories away without asking her, for his own purposes? How many times had he treated her like a child, or as if she were inconsequential, or raped her brain like that, and thought it was totally justified and completely okay; and did he just not trust her at all with any information he thought was remotely sensitive?

Over there, across the room, Betta George broke in before any of them could speak further. --Maybe you should all, um… talk about this another time? I don’t need to be in it, right?--

“Right.” Buffy snapped her head around, fighting to keep her voice level, even. Businesslike. And avoided looking at Angel with everything she had. “So, then, what makes Gunn think he can use Illyria to get us all back home? How does he think he can control her enough?” They needed to get what they came for and get the hell out of here. And she needed to walk back. No way she was sitting in the same car with Angel all the way back to the hotel. Hell, maybe she wasn’t staying at the Hyperion anymore. At least, not for a while.

Not till she got her head on straight about all this.

\--I don’t know his plan,-- George informed them quietly. --Like I said, he tried not to think about it around me, but I know he does plan to use all those magickal artifacts he’s gathered to do something with her…--

Spike grunted, thumb lightly caressing the back of her hand in a conscious, tactile checking-in gesture designed to tell her that he was there, he had her back. “Maybe he thinks he can use the things to, I dunno. Force her into some kind of desperation play. Save the shell, since he’s half-killed it…”

“And then what?” Buffy demanded, frowning. “Barter services with him in exchange for healing it?”

\--The problem is, as long as she clings to the human memories connected to that body’s cells, she won’t do what he wants her to do.-- George sounded deeply certain. --I gotta tell you; being close to that Old One’s mind was a wild ride, but I did learn one thing out of that contact. Here is where the ghost of her guy exists. I’m not sure she really wants to go back.--

“But…” Angel broke in, sounding desperate, “she’s not Fred anymore! Whatever Wes and Fred had, at best Illyria thought of him as a pet or a possession, not…” 

\--She still has the memories of the woman who loved him. She is confused by the connections she has to all of you. But not all of you will be there on the other side if she returns the city to what it was. She would have to leave the ghost behind, and she's not a fan. She doesn't want to accept that she's ultimately the reason he's dead, and basically stuck here serving these Senior Partner guys.--

"Well, really, the last part's on me," Angel put in grimly.  
  
Whatever Angel said about blame, Buffy got where Illyria was coming from on the whole Wes thing. For an Old One, this place might feel damned comfortable, compared to back home. Heck, it felt frighteningly comfortable for a Slayer… or at least this thrice-dead one. Not to mention that here, Illyria was somebody again, where back home she was just… Well, the pop-snake in the joke-shop can. Not taken seriously at all. 

Facing change, possible loss… That was tough. No one knew what awaited them on the other side, who had made of this place something of a home. And if this was the only dimension where you got to be with the ghost of your dead lover...  
  
Yeah, actually, fuck that. If going back meant losing Spike, Buffy would stay till she starved. /I _totally_ get where she's coming from. Because I've already played the 'leave you behind so I can "live"' game, and it sucked a big, fat, massive ball of lame. I wouldn't do it again if you _paid_ me./

Not to mention that sometimes it just felt comfortable here, which made the concept of going home kind of unattractive on a good day; made the idea of facing all that stress kind of meh. It was tough enough to face a prospect like that as a mostly-human with a few Slayer-Line-instincts poking through to mess with her head on the daily and confuse her priorities. Illyria had to be a disaster, with all of Fred's stuff bleeding through.  
  
Buffy was no Glory, but she had to bet that Ben’s memories had kind of messed with that bitch at least a little; or at least according to what Dawn had told them about it when they were discussing the differences between Ben and Caleb. And an Old One was really just an insanely-powerful demon, not a god in the way that removed her from material existence on the current plane. Illyria was a person with feelings, if a strange one, where hellgods were basically sociopaths. Their blue friend might not understand her emotions for such odd creatures as humans… but in being powered down and forced to interact she knew that she had them, and they definitely affected her in ways that Ben’s had only affected Glory near the end. “If she’s torn about ending our stay here, he’s got no leverage over her.”  
  
"So what does this mean?” Groo broke in, clearly confused. 

“He’s gonna try to separate Illyria from Fred’s memories,” Spike answered grimly, and dropped his half-smoked cigarette to the carpet. Ground it out viciously into thousand-dollar fibers, as if he were taking revenge against something.

“Surely we must get the Old One back, away from the vampire before he can attempt this!” Groo sounded all pumped to head out immediately.

“Hold up.” Buffy lifted a hand, honestly concerned. “Can he even _do_ that, though? Illyria and Fred share a body. Or, I mean, she uses Fred’s body as a vehicle. Whatever. That means she uses Fred’s brain, too, right?”

Angel looked more bleak than she thought she had ever seen him. “All her organs were… dissolved when Illyria took over. But… It sounds like there’s some cellular memory…”

/Ugh./ The thought of dying that way—of having all your organs gradually dissolved inside of you while something ancient and alien slowly invaded—was terrifying and gross and, damn, it must have been so incredibly _painful_. It didn’t bear close examination. “So then how can she be separated from memories that are trapped in a body with her?” It just didn’t make sense.

“The altar,” Angel answered, and there was a terrified awe in his voice as he said it. “He’s going to use all of the things he’s collected to try to get her out of Fred’s body. Use the dimension to destabilize her, force her out, back into her primordial self. When she’s unbound, when she has all her powers back, it’ll remove her so far from us and our concerns that she won’t care anymore, about _any_ of us. About anything Fred cared about… and in that form she can do just about _anything;_ up to and including mess with time.”  
  
A short silence rippled through the room, fraught with worry. _“Buffy…”_ Spike whispered, breaking it, and she could feel the vibrations begin again. Knew what he was thinking. That he had let Gunn get away with Illyria. That he had allowed it. That this was his fault.

“Don’t,” she told him flatly, and tamped down the rising horror. “You couldn’t have stopped him if you were dead. And anyway, _I_ stopped _you_, so this is _my_ fault.” /Yet another apocalypse I set in motion because I couldn’t face losing someone I loved. Because a Slayer isn’t supposed to love. Angel, then Dawn, now Spike…/

“Actually, it’s mine,” Angel interrupted their half-unspoken debate squarely. “I missed. I took too long to reload. I could’ve had him...”

“It matters not, my friends, who was at fault. What matters now is ending this.” Groo, as always, worked from the present moment. He was a very optimistic and forward-thinking creature, Buffy had to give him that.

She needed to jump on that train. Fix her mistake. _Now_. “He’s right. We need to come up with a plan, and quick.” She caught Groo’s eye, fought the instinctive urge to pull her hand out of Spike’s grip so that he couldn’t feel or suspect what she was thinking. He had always read her too damned well, way before the damn bond gave him an edge he didn't need. “I think we should start doing some scouting. Fast. Because if I were Gunn, I wouldn’t have gone back to my old hideout after that last confrontation.”

Spike squeezed back in response, clearly grateful that she wanted to get going, and somehow completely missing what was on her mind. 

Groo, of course, bounced on his heels, raring to go. “Excellent, Champion Buffy. Do you wish to depart now?”

Angel just looked morose and discouraged. “Wild goose chase, anyone?”

\--I dunno,-- Betta George answered the throwaway comment almost cheerfully. --If you were him, where would you go?--

Arrested, Angel and Spike exchanged glances. “I mean…” Angel began tentatively.

Spike slipped his hand away from Buffy’s to cross his arms thoughtfully. Canted his head as if it were a nice, intriguing thought-puzzle. “What do you think? The sewer?”

“That’s what I would do, but do you think that’s what Gunn would do?”

“Well, he’s no rat-eater, but it does offer cover.”

“Spike, right now the entire _city_ offers cover.”

They started for the entrance, wrangling, Groo trailing behind and watching them with something between interest and confusion. Taking up the rear Buffy shook her head, arms crossed, and turned to their fishy friend. “Thanks,” she whispered.

One shining, jet eye rolled toward her like a vast, wet, black croquet ball. --They always like this?--

She eyed the departing fools with a jaundiced air as she turned to follow. “Don’t even get me started.”

\--Hey,-- Betta George called quietly after her, halting her before she had gone more than a couple of steps. --Don’t…--

She paused. Turned only her head back to half-regard the piscine demon. “Don’t what?”

The fish hesitated. --I got to know him pretty well when we were at Mosaic together.--

“Okay, what’s Mosaic?”

George seemed surprised. --It’s kind of a hospital-slash-asylum for demons, and people who are affected by the supernatural. He came there for a while…--

/_Excuse_ me?/

\--…To help out on a case,-- George reassured her quietly. --It’s a long story. Anyway, he… The way he feels about you…-- A short silence, as if he were reconsidering something, then… --You did the right thing.--

She froze, a spark of rage shooting through her at his temerity. She hadn’t asked to be read, dammit! But before she could snap at the thing he went on, an inexorable, quiet voice that seemed to drill through her brain and cripple her soul. --Don’t do what he almost did. Don’t trade places. Just… remember what it almost did to you when he did it.--

She closed her eyes, breathing hard and fast as, unbidden, she came under assault from a memory. Spike’s words from two months ago lobbed their volleys into her mind, leaving no quarter; horrible meteors of truth. _“You better not bloody leave me again, you know. I won’t have it. I’m about bleeding done with loving women and watching them sod off out of my life.” _And less than a month back. _“Now if you go—if I lose you—there’ll be nothing left of me. Nothin’ but ashes.”_

Ashes. /You tried to leave me again./ The feel, the smell, the taste of him, ashes falling through her fingers. So close, and so impossibly far, and what if...   
  
What if he had left her alone again? What if he had left her alone _here?_  
  
Not for revenge. He already knew. It was just...  
  
He got it. He _knew._ That was why she...   
  
\--He feels the same way about it. So at least tell him what you’re thinking, so you can go together. It’s only fair.--

She couldn’t trust herself to speak, because she knew it was goddamned true. And it really ruined it all. Her ability to go out and do the work and solo without worrying about how it would affect someone else… because unlike Dawn, or Willow, or Xander; any of the rest of her people… 

She was all Spike _had_. 

The others would survive, if they lost her. Had before, could again. Were, most likely, right now. But him… 

She knew how shattering it could be to lose a loved one. But to lose your _only_ loved one?

Without words to reply, she did the only thing she could do. She marched out of the room, out of Betta George’s goddamned irritatingly aware presence. Out of the Biltmore; in stymied silence. But she couldn’t silence the damage his words had done to her certainty. 

Fucking infuriating demon telepaths.

***

“I know how you feel.”

Spike had his arms crossed, his head down; a habitual pose for him, lately. When he heard her, though, he straightened in acknowledgment. Uncrossed the arms, scoffed a little. “Doubt it, Buffy. But I appreciate the solidarity.”

“You feel responsible,” she went on, inexorable. Beating down his sardonic defenses with the pulse of his own thoughts… because they were hers, too. “Like you need to fix it. Like this is yours to do, or die trying; because you didn’t before…” She sucked in a deep breath and went for it. “And you feel trapped, because of me.”

His head jerked up, and dark sapphire eyes locked on hers, glinting in the gloom of their shared, crypt-like space in the Hyperion basement. 

“I feel the same way.”

That froze him. “Buffy…”

“You _know_ me,” she whispered, coming closer. Caught his hand, tugged it free from his crossed arms so they dropped. “Tell me where I just went with that. What we heard.” 

His eyes stayed on hers for a moment. Widened. And then he yanked his hand away abruptly, his gaze turned to ice. “Sodding Christ, Buffy!” And his hands shot up to wrap around the back of his neck for a moment as if she had just given him the world’s worst headache. Only briefly, though, before he flung them away in an excess of overwhelm and frustration... and was in her face before she could blink. “If you fucking dare to try without me I will bleed you dry, to you _hear_ me?”

She had expected that response, did not even bat an eye. “Would I be stupid enough to walk into another apocalypse without you at my side?”

That set him back on his heels for a sec, but then he was back in her face, all hair-trigger rage that she knew was only anger on the face of it. Underneath it was one hundred percent terror; a man fighting for his life. 

And she knew exactly how he felt there, too, before he had to say a single word in reply. 

She let him get it out, though, because he needed to. “Yeah, you would,” he grated, “if you thought I was too emotionally involved. Or if you thought _you_ were. Dammit, Slayer; if you thought the reason you did it wrong the first time was because of me, you would leave me behind in a heartbeat. If you thought you hesitated because of me…” He turned away, tension singing in his frame. Whirled back to glare at her, damn near vibrating with it. “And I don’t give one single damn about any of that rubbish, you mad bint! You bring me along, or I _will_ follow you and muck it all up for you, because you’re _not_ gettin’ away from me!”

She smiled down at the floor, the warmth of it spreading through her entire being to unfreeze her soul. And when she lifted her eyes to his, let him see it. “So I noticed.” /God, I love you./

He relaxed a little, though he still watched her warily. “I dunno if I trust you right now, Buffy.”

She fought with herself. Exhaled long and slow before she spoke, aware it came out shaky. “I know. I’m trying. I’m here, telling you, instead of just taking the next dragon out.”

That froze him again; a statue made of pale, carven ice. When he came out of his stasis he groaned, strode to the couch. Sat heavily and rubbed his hands through his hair. “You could’ve. I did.”

She moved to join him, sighed a little. “We’re still working on this partnership thing. We’re both still kind of used to just going off doing our own thing and coming back to report in. Me more than you, obviously, since I’ve been in charge forever. And…” She looked at her clasped hands. “You know how hard this is for me. It all plays in together. The Slayer isn’t supposed to love, because that’s how people get hurt. That’s how people… _die_.” /Like you did./ She pulled in a stilted, halting breath. “Or everyone leaves. I can’t have both. Either I lose everyone else—the whole world—or I lose the One. I have to kill them…” /Angel./ “Or I have to choose to give up everything for them, and the world.” /Dawn./ 

Her eyes caught his. “Or they choose _for_ me, save the world… and I still lose.” He winced, staring into at his own palms, as she drove onward. “But I can’t help it. I love you. And now this, and… Better if I leave first, right?”

“Fuck, Buffy.” He turned to her, caught her hands, her eyes in his intense gaze. “We’re gonna find another way out. This time, we will. I don’t believe in your bleedin’ narrative, alright? I just sodding don’t!”

The warmth he could bring her with his cool touch and his words always amazed her. Had always blown her away. “Come with me? We’ll hunt for him. Try to find that way together?”

She almost hadn’t finished getting the words out before his mouth was on hers, and she was tugged close against his chest. Clung tight to his shirt, to his back, to the solidness of him; here, real, right. And… /Maybe somehow this time can be different./ Just the thought of trying, of taking the risk, was terrifying enough to stop her breath. But. /Maybe… I’ve already given Them enough death./

After all, if ashes could become solid again, not once but three times, then there was still magic enough in the world to turn her gift into something like love, right?  
  
***  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
I just want to make all the things right, okay, dammit?  
I'm overwriting the program, and no one can stop me.


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Building toward the big finale, though it'll be a longish arc.  
**Warning for major character death.**
> 
> (Some dialogue borrowed from After The Fall)

They spent three dimensional days searching; she and Spike borrowing Cordelia the dragon while Angel went up with Groo on his flying horse. It was an arrangement that had taken some fast talking, but had finally worked out in the end. 

No sign of Gunn and his captive Old One were in evidence, however. He had for sure cleared out of his spot in South LA, and was nowhere near it as far as Buffy's vamp-sense and Spike’s enhanced olfactory scanning could determine. Which made total sense from a military standpoint, since god knew if it was her,she would have left the damn corner after their first visit instead of just crossing the block to set up camp in a neighboring building. /But then, are we any better? We’re still hanging out at the Hyperion like a bunch of stupid practice targets, aren't we?/   
  
Anyway, Gunn wouldn’t be back. He was busy avoiding them now. They had both had stayed in one place for too long. 

He was clearly on the move at this point, though, or at least they could find neither hide nor fang of him. And there were still people out there who needed saving. In fact, that was really all they kept finding on their patrols, most times. Survivors. No Gunn, no Illyria; just the same slow, steady stream of straggling refugees to filter up to Mayor Lorne. And there was the business of scavenging for supplies to keep herself, Connor, and Angel in vitamins and foodstuffs and potables, and Spike in Morleys and whiskey, since her vampire continued to manfully eschew his food-eating hobby in order to save the supplies for those who needed them to survive. “Mostly I enjoy the stuff ‘cause I didn’t when I was human. Ate what a gentleman ate in my first life. Now… Can still drink and smoke and shag and play poker, yeah? Though, can’t bet on the dogs, in this shitehole." A little roll of the tongue to show her he was mostly joking, though it quickly faded. "Any road, the food here’s lousy. Sorry about that, Love.” 

What with one thing and the other, the apocalypse seemed to be on hold for the moment. Or at least there was as yet no sign of anything dire going down, and dammit, Buffy hated these breath-hold-y, pre-apocalyptic hiatuses. Hiatae? What the hell was the plural of _that_ one?

Three days had passed since they’d talked to Betta George. Her stir-crazy vampire had finally made a break for it and was out in the Impala scrounging for water and smokes and making disgruntled noises about how long it had been since he’d had an onion blossom. She had no idea what Connor was up to, since he hardly ever left his room anymore. He had taken Gwen's death hard, not that Buffy blamed him. God knew the kid didn’t want to talk to her, all happily relationship-bound as she was; not to mention she had to be a weird, equivocal figure in his life, considering who the hell knew what he probably made of her whole former thing with his bio-dad. Actually, Buffy was kind of amazed the kid didn't bail to spend more time up at Silver Lake with his adoptive parents, if only to get away from the site of his girlfriend's demise. It would have been healthier.   
  
It made the place seem echoingly empty, though, like she was all alone, with him hiding away like he did. Angel had left before Spike and was already off flying around on his dragon doing who knew what. “Scouting,” he’d said, which covered a lot of territory. Maybe he just needed time alone with his thoughts or something. For sure, the close quarters in here was kind of edgy-making. It was no three-bedroom suburban house packed to the gills with teenage girls, but it still managed to feel kind of tense sometimes, mostly-vacant, half-condemned hotel or no. 

As if to save her sanity, though, Groo stopped by out of nowhere while they were all out; probably because he was bored out of his skull over there at Silver Lake now that there were no battles to be had on a regular basis or something. “What say you and I go on a scouting mission of our own, Champion Buffy?” he proposed when she’d let him know that Angel had taken himself off to go wandering alone. “Perhaps we two shall find success.”

“Not if our luck holds,” she answered, feeling discouraged as hell. Though, maybe she’d take him up on it just for something to do. Before he’d walked through the atrium doors she had just been about to grab her trusty axe and make a quick bid for freedom, see if she could poke up something to kill; just to settle the itch. “A short flight around to look at the city wouldn’t hurt, though, I guess.” Who knew you could get bored in a demon dimension?

It was problematic when your good-guy team was actually _too_ efficient. Or, at least it was for restless Slayers. 

On the other hand, though, Spike should be back at any moment to join them. She could cool her heels that long, certainly. It wouldn’t kill her. /Not sure why you’re complaining about cabin fever when you were the idiot who didn’t go with him on his scrounging mission. _“I’ll hold down the fort.”_ What _was_ that? You would already be out and ab…/

A resounding, bellowing, unearthly shriek echoed through the building, cutting off all thought. Reverberated throughout all of Downtown, knocking plaster from the high crown moldings of the Hyperion’s central cupola and made the entire building rattle. Sounded again… and upstairs, one of the multi-paned, bronze-and-cream-hued windows imploded with a shocking din.

Outside, the sable Pegasus reared, screeching and flapping its wings, eyes white all round with the rim of sheer terror. Buffy wasn’t far behind. “What the hell was _that?”_

Groo just shook his head slowly, staring around him in stunned amazement.

From upstairs she could hear Connor’s shocked exclamations through what felt like numbed ears. 

Then, from somewhere to the southwest, she heard a new cacophony. A repetitive noise, enormous and vast and terrifying; like a demolition without explosives, but as regular as dominoes falling. It sounded like buildings crashing down; as if something gigantic were coming their way, bringing down everything in its wake. “Groo,” Buffy told her fellow Champion tightly, “we need to take to the air and see what the hell that is.”

“Agreed! Come!” 

It took him a good half a minute to calm his Pegasus-demon enough to convince it that carrying riders was a good plan, but once the thing had all four hooves on the ground it was enough for Buffy. In moments she had swung herself aboard the gigantic, shiny black steed, Groo only an instant behind her… and they were off, launching upward beyond the desiccated gardens of the Hyperion and out into open orange sky.

They saw it almost immediately. Impossible to miss it, after all, the way it loomed on the horizon; an immense, dark column of a shape, stalking ever closer to Downtown. Something enormous, vast, skyscraper-tall; comprised of dozens of girthy, purplish tentacles thick as city buses emerging from a hard, maroon carapace, smaller ultramarine tentacles coming off the top of what might have been a head, like gargantuan dreadlocks. 

It was the only resemblance to the woman she had been in Fred’s body, but somehow, Buffy knew. The blue streaks… “Oh my God. I think that’s Illyria.” 

“That vast creature?” Groo actually sounded impressed for a change. Which wasn’t surprising, since at that moment the thing that used to be Spike’s co-ruler was busy flattening an entire high-rise with one step. It took another stride, the ground rippling around it in concussive waves, like a localized earthquake. And the buildings before it toppled forward like concrete trees falling before a backhoe. 

Well. That explained the noise. /He did it. And then maybe she stepped on him on her way out the door?/ It might have been too much to hope for, but one never knew which way the wind might blow. “We have to stop It. It’s going to destroy everything. And It’s coming right for us.”

Groo settled back in his seat behind her. “Oh. Yes, I suppose we must.” He reached down to slip an overwarm hand under the back of her thigh, which would have made Buffy exclaim and slap him for the sudden, unwonted liberty if she hadn't felt the hard, chill intrusion as he loosened his sword in its scabbard on the saddle. “This looks insurmountable, Champion Buffy.” And, regarding her with that bizarrely wide, blindingly toothy and genuine smile, he hefted the blade beside her head. “This death is hardly glorious enough.”

Buffy stared back over her shoulder, half-bemused. “Yeah. Right. I mean, I guess we could die, but I don’t really plan on it. For one thing, Spike would kill me if I went and died without him.”

That aside earned her a startled look. “You ask your mate permission before you would die?”

/At this point, considering everything, we both better do that. But./ “Not permission, Groo. Company.” Letting out a slightly shaky breath, she tugged free her ever-present axe from its metal belt-loop. “He’s gonna be so pissed off at me,” she murmured, and nodded at her co-Champion. “Alright, let’s see if we can at least slow her down.” And she lifted calculating eyes at their incoming threat. “Maybe we can turn her.” A new idea occurred. “Maybe tick her off enough to lead her away in another direction.”

“A fine strategy!” And he urged his jet beast forward. 

As they streaked in closer toward the looming monster, that incredible sense of overwhelming _presence_ began to swamp Buffy's mind. Familiar in that it felt like Illyria… but so much more immense and encompassing that she couldn’t even begin to comprehend it; as if all that had made up that presence had been dimmed somehow, in that human body… /Shell. She called Fred a shell./ Dimmed and shielded and lessened, and now it was out in full force. And it _was_ a force; so much so that she was amazed that it wasn’t visible like some gigantic, suffocating pall, the way it oppressed the mind and shut down all thinking and made something deep inside Buffy’s lizard brain want to fall down and worship, or cower. Definitely to be amazed at her own temerity for daring to attack a god, and she had never felt anything like this from Glory. Maybe because Glory hadn’t been a god of their world, whereas Illyria had apparently always belonged to the same world to which she, Buffy, also called home. 

And, holy fuck, she was massive. Buffy began to feel more and more like one of those old Claymation cartoons from her childhood; some little faerie on the back of a dragonfly-sized rocking horse, darting in to do battle with a giant. The kind that would eventually get swatted off as a barely-noticeable irritant as the giant went about its business of stomping on people’s houses and trees; because in comparison to Illyria, that was what they were right now. Like a buzzing housefly or a mildly annoying bee coming in for the attack. 

/But a bee can still cause problems when it stings/ she thought, and hoped the demon horse here didn’t balk or throw them off at the last minute. After all, this was a fully-awakened Old One here. Probably most demons wanted to make themselves more than scarce right now, whether they were from the same dimension as this particular demigod or no. /If you do decide to buck us off, can you do it when we’re not, like, twenty stories up? I’m just saying./ Because the onyx Pegasus was already quaking beneath their legs like it was being driven into a wind-tunnel, and they weren’t even within striking distance. Clearly only sheer love for Groo kept it going forward as it approached the behemoth that was the primordial Illyria.

“Come, Cordelia! Glorious death awaits!” Groo sounded positively stoked about it, the freak. 

/Seriously, Groo; death isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Or, at least not in my experience. But maybe if you manage it, people will leave you alone to enjoy it, so there’s that./ Still, he didn’t have to sound so damned enthused.

Granted, the woman he loved was already dead, so maybe he had his own death wish going. She could respect that. He seemed too jolly and easygoing for a suicidally-depressed guy—being as she felt she should be able to recognize the type—but maybe it manifested in different ways for different people? Like, maybe sometimes it came off as manic optimism, but about death?

Buffy didn’t want to die anymore. She was having the hell of a time living, lately, and she wanted to keep doing it. /I finally have something really _good_ to live for, dammit, so why _this?_ Why _now?_/

But it was her fault. Her fault Gunn had had the time to get away and turn the crazed Old One loose on all of them; which made this hers to fix. As always. “Try to turn the horse broadside so we can avoid the tentacles. If she can keep just out of reach, maybe we can sting It every time It tries for a grab. Dart in and out, you know, and try to tempt It toward us. Piss It off enough to lead It in the direction we want it to take.” Too weird to think of this ginormous... presence as a 'she'. And it would be way easier to contemplate, mentally-speaking, the idea of just poking at that thing in an attempt to knock it off course, than to even _think_ about harming it. Not only was that concept patently ridiculous, but it seemed genuinely sacrilegious to her tiny human mind right now, and holy crap, she needed to shake this off!

“My Cordelia is nimble and courageous,” Groo was shouting back, seemingly unaffected. “We can do this!” Damn Pylean and his damn not coming from the same dimension as this particular god-thing.

It even worked for a while, though it was a harrowing enterprise. They stooped forward on their sweating, terrified mount, the Pegasus screaming like a banshee as it made directly for one massive, writhing limb. Turned broadside at the last second so that she and Groo could strike; she with a wide, circular swing (and man, was it ever hard to make herself actually do it), he with a hard, overhand stab downward at the tip of the nearest tentacle (and, just for the record, he didn’t seem to be having any trouble). And then they were away again while the thing whipped back and four other limbs instantly struck out in their direction, wailing through the air like silo-sized torpedoes; and it was all dodging and holding on for dear life and trying not to fall off the horse for a few minutes in a crazed welter of rocking and clinging and half-flipping and squawks from the Pegasus, and they had lost a ton of altitude by the time they regained their minimum safe distance. 

Holy crap, they had to get smoother at that, or their transportation was going to seriously run out of steam before they’d made even a tiny dent. The getaway had been nothing if not precarious. And it must be said that their quarry had not made a sound, had not altered trajectory in the slightest. It was as if the attack had made little to no impact. Which said a lot about their chances.

Still. Nothing to it but to go back to it again and hope for the best. So they did. Three more times, from various angles, with a clearly terrified but still-willing mount who chopped and changed beneath them like a trembling, feathered kamikaze. But the tentacles merely waved or rippled automatically to brush them off, and maybe there was the suggestion of some kind of dark ichor in a vague slick on the edge of Buffy's axe… but it was also badly dented by the second pass. Which meant maybe the crap on the axe might even just be some kind of primordial skin cells, and maybe they were barely giving Illyria here a nice, gentle exfoliation. Because there was no other real indication that they were making even a tiny impression on the gargantuan being they had come to attack. 

How were they even supposed to get the thing’s attention? “This isn’t working!” she shouted in Groo’s ear.

“We must attack the weak points!” he called back.

/As if!/ “We don’t know her weak points!” /God, as far as we know, she... It doesn’t even _have_ any!/ “It doesn’t even seem to have _eyes!_ Or if It does, they’re buried under all that shell. Her head is barely a nub up there under all that tentacle-and-armor situation she has going on up top.” Buffy supposed one of them could jump off and climb up there, but it sounded highly problematic from a survival aspect.

What kind of creature was Illyria supposed to _be,_ anyway? She found herself randomly pondering the question as they swung in for another run. The Mayor had been shooting for ‘giant snake’. Illyria seemed to be going more for ‘huge octopus-cockroach-thing’… which, ew?

But, as far as invulnerable forms went, this one had the ex-Mayor of Sunnydale beat all hollow. And even then, it had taken plastic explosives to make a dent. Buffy kind of had her doubts right now that her axe and Groo’s sword were really going to get the job done. “Do you see any military bases down there anywhere, by chance?” she called to her copilot. The wind whipped her words half away, and the giant thing hove closer, and this was just really, really going to end badly. Spike was going to be so incredibly pissed off at her. And, honestly, he’d have the right to be, going after a demonic demigod with an axe and a flying horse like she was in some kind of fairy tale. She knew better. “I could really use, like, a bazooka right now. Go old school.”

Groo, literal being that he was, shook his head sadly as they drew to within a few feet of striking distance. “I do not see such a facility close by, Champion Buffy. But, where is the glory in destroying such a mighty enemy with explosives, when we can take it down with honorable combat and the powers of our combined intellect and skill?”

Buffy found herself gaping at the fool. “Except we really can’t Groo. This is so not something we can do with what we have. I think we’re going to have to…”

A tentacle whipped out; further than should have been possible. Struck the Pegasus-demon broadside on the neck, so that Buffy almost lost an arm, had to cling with all she had, bent low over the animal’s withers to keep from falling off as the winged beast went ass over teakettle midair. 

Groo, though, didn’t have a mane to grab onto. Which meant that he fell, sword in hand.

They had gotten Illyria’s attention. Finally.

Buffy made a desperate grab for him, still gyrating on the horse’s flailing body. Missed, nearly lost purchase herself. The animal was screaming; whether in agony from the blow or out of concern for her rider, Buffy wasn’t sure. And then another more horrible sound caught her ears; wrenched at her. A gurgling, awful, crunching sound. 

A tentacle rose, curled up like a child holding a sno-cone. And, snug inside it, lolling… and gurgle-screaming… was the long-haired, still-beautiful Groosalugg. 

Most of him was buried in the thing’s grip, but she could see him twitching, jerking; struggling for breath, though almost every bone in his body had to already be broken by that unbelievably massive muscle. /No!/

Buffy wasn’t sure if she yelled it or just thought it, but she was already kicking the injured horse-demon forward. It staggered midair, making the attempt for the sake of its dying master, and as it closed with the tentacle she clung with her legs. Leaned over, and began hacking with every ounce of strength she had. 

She hoped to get another enraged shriek. To turn Illyria’s attention to her. To get her to loosen her hold on Groo. Lolling, crushed Groo, who had to still be alive, had to…

But the Old One had a dozen tentacles. More. It didn’t need to pay attention to irritants. Another came down, to sweep her away, and they had to leave, had to move… /Oh God, Groo…/

They dodged, she and the black Pegasus. But the flying horse was too slow. Probably it had internal injuries from the first blow. It took the second blow full on the side, near the butt, and spun out hard, the wind-sheer ripping at one wing so that feathers shot away, plummeting all around Buffy’s head as they catapulted straight for the ground at a sickening rate; and she thought the creature was trying to brake, but the wing was clearly dislocated if not broken, and all it could do was slow their fall with the good one, and it was screaming, screaming…

She could still hear Groo. Or maybe it was all in her mind, but she could swear she could hear gasps, gurgles, weak thumps before the wind of their fall cut everything off. And this was it, they were going to hit the top of that one building over there; the one rushing closer and closer at breakneck…

Somehow, the insane Pegasus-demon saved her life. Maybe it did it because it hadn’t been able to save Groo, and it knew its master had liked her. She would probably never know. But, injured, probably already dying, it had used its last physical capacity to perform some incredible midair maneuver that Buffy would never fully understand, and flipped around just before the moment of impact to steer their fall toward what was left of one of those rooftop gardens that urban denizens sometimes managed to keep alive. The tangled vines of dead, potted wisteria or whatever the hell it had been on their sun-rotted arbor broke the animal’s fall; and braking as it had been from the side, with its one good wing, it landed on the shredded one… with Buffy atop it. 

As impacts go, she had seldom felt a more painful one. But she didn’t die.

It took her a pretty significant, excruciatingly extended period to get her wind back. But if she couldn’t breathe, she could unfortunately see and hear. As the wind whistled over the tops of the empty buildings, and the last breath left the creature who had saved her, she gasped and choked and stared up at the behemoth towering over the top of the structure, blocking out the ocher light of the dimensional sun… And she could still see him. Groo. A speck of a broken figure wrapped in that huge, beefy tentacle. So far away; much too far away for her to help him. Too far for anyone to help him.

He was still holding his sword. Might even still be trying to wield it, if weakly. God, he was so insanely brave, so incredibly strong, she didn’t even know if she would still be…

It all ended when a second tentacle descended with ponderous grace. Wrapped around him, atop the first. And turned in the opposite direction from the other.

And ground him to a pulp.

She heard it from here. The final, high, agonized scream turned gurgling… and cut off. Heard the wet slap as the… pieces… landed, somewhere nearby, in two separate, indistinguishable lumps on the broken pavement.

/Oh no, oh fuck no, oh _shit…/_

Buffy had seen a hell of a lot. Had witnessed some fucking awful deaths in her time. But that one… was probably the worst. 

/And it was my fault.

/I’m so sorry, Groo./

***

**S:**  
  
“Where the hell did Buffy go?”

“Like I know! I don’t keep tabs on your girlfriend! Everything started shaking, there was that horrible sound that broke half the windows, and when I came down here to see what the heck was going on, she was gone.” Connor frowned thoughtfully. “I think I maybe also heard Groo’s voice…” 

/Oh bloody fuck, Buffy…/ Whirling, Spike headed for the door. 

“Spike, where are you…”

He didn’t even bother to stop long enough to give his grandsire the courtesy of an answer. Spoke it over his shoulder as he headed out the door. “You saw that fucking thing, Angel, and you know Buffy. You know exactly where she went.”

“You think she… No.” Angel sounded stupidly certain as he jogged up to catch Spike at the doorway. “She wouldn’t be that crazy, would she?”

/She’s a hero, you nit./ “Of course she would. The chit’s mad as a hatter when it comes to shite like this.” Gaining the door, Spike stared out at the looming figure of what he assumed was Illyria; all tentacles and writhing mass out there on the horizon and heading this way. /Guess this is goodbye, Fred./ He stepped purposefully down. Headed for his Impala.

“What, you’re just gonna go out there and…”

He whirled on Angel, abruptly at the end of his bloody rope. “Whatever Buffy’s doing isn’t stopping the bitch. And I don’t know about you, Peaches, but that thought just doesn’t quite sit right with me. Nor does sittin’ back here with a bag of crisps waitin’ to see if the girl comes back, yeah? I’m for goin’ to give a hand.” He made off again, black mood threatening to swamp him. /If you got yourself killed I will _murder_ you, you infuriating fucking unbelievable scourge of a woman…/ 

Desolation swamped him. He fought it down with an effort. /She’s _not_. You can still feel her. Just that way…/

Which was, of course, right exactly in the path of that fucking personification of destruction out there currently chewing its way through the scenery as it made for Downtown LA. 

“Just… Let’s take the dragon, okay? She’s faster and we’ll see more. Your car’ll take forever and you might miss her.”

/What the bloody fuck?/ “Who invited you, Liam?” he demanded, pressed beyond all patience by the continued presence of his trotting hanger-on.

“Shut the hell up, Spike, and get on the damn dragon. You know I’m right. And don’t call me Liam.”

Spike spun on his heel to glare over at his sire’s sire. He’d called his buggering demonic collie and was just standing there looking like his usual moody, besotted self, hanging about over everyone’s shoulder wanting to be kept in the damn loop, and Spike just did _not_ have the time to coddle him. “You’re human as you ever were, _Liam_.” He ground out the word, teeth bared… and vamped. “Now, take your bloody beast and get the hell out of my way.”

His head rocked back, by dint of an entirely unexpected fist to the chin. When he straightened, glaring gold sparks at the man, he was met with dark embers. And sodding hell if he wasn’t still intimidated, in the darkest quiet of his heart, when that face got right into his; whether he could feel the burning blood and the sire-bond or no. “You listen to me, boyo, because I’m only going to say this once.” Angel’s voice had dropped to that low, intense register that he reserved for these moments when Spike had seriously brassed him off. “I may not be the vamp who raised you anymore, but you’re going to do what you’re fucking told, Willie-boy; just this once, or I will stake you where you stand.”

“And why the hell should I do that?” Spike spat. Brass tacks weren’t in it. He was going to rieve Angel of his fucking life and have done. /I’m over having you push me around./

Something soared in him as the realization hit like lightening. /And now, I don’t have to let you anymore. You’re not my sire. You’re a bloody human, and I’m a Slayer-fed Master vamp with a sodding full belly. You’re shite to me anymore. I belong to Buffy, and I don’t owe you a bleedin’ thing./ It was freeing. It was wondrous. 

The looming, dark mien before him turned abruptly to disgust. “Because we’re _family_, you little pissant. And right now the woman we both love is out there. I may be out of the running for her heart, but that means exactly jack when it comes to mine. And I know you. I taught you proper respect. So you’re going to let me come along, and choose my own death if that’s what’s in the cards for me today; and you’re going to for once keep your goddamn smartass mouth shut about it.”

Spike remained still, as the word ‘family’ struck him square, damn near brought him to his knees. Breathed hard through his nostrils till they flared; not out of any physical requirement, but out of the need to sense, to scent, to seek for cues. Not out of emotional necessity, of course. One must remain calm before Angelus; one must not show weakness, one must not... /He’s not even Angelus anymore, you fucking numpty! He’s just a sodding human, and you could rip his bleedin’ head straight off if you wanted to anymore!/ 

Except he couldn’t. Not now and not ever. Not while it wore that face, and well Spike knew it. They both did. And not because of the soul, and not because of Buffy, and, just, fucking hell. 

It was because he still loved the bastard… and feared him, and what a bleeding mess. 

Only by dint of a century’s control did he manage, finally, to shove his fingers—which were not fucking shaking, by Christ they were not—into his breast pocket, finger the packet of fags, drag one out and shove it between numb lips in a pretentious show of uncaring that he knew was as transparent as fuck, but what the hell. One did what one had to do. “Come and die if you’re gonna, Angel,” He muttered, and lit the thing. “Only stay out of my fucking way.” And he stepped around his elder to stride up to the waiting beast. Swung aboard. And waited, face forward and vibrating with unwillingness and the need to be gone while his all-too-human wreck of a grandsire clambered up behind him.

They were off finally, and careering toward the enormous, towering _thing_ that was all that was left of Illyria, and bloody fuck, he wanted to cower. His demon was _screaming_ inside him, the closer he went; everything in him flinching and whinging at him to tuck tail and run away as fast as ever he might, because that was a thing he should never approach save in full worship, never come near save with his own dead heart in his hands, never dare to raise his hand against it. It was mighty, greater than anything he had ever come near, he was but a puling spawn, it was worthy of all self-immolation and…

/What the buggering fuck?/ “Is this getting to you at all?” he demanded of Angel, feeling like a dog coming out of a river. /Shake it off, damn it! It’s just a wee monster…/

Except it wasn’t, was it. It was a fucking Old One in full kit, and he was, at the core of him, still a sodding demon. An earthly one, and that Old One had his comparatively minor demon in a true tizzy. 

“I’m feeling a little awed, yeah,” Angel was saying, somewhere behind his right ear, but he didn’t sound nearly as affected as Spike was. Lucky bastard, to have lost his demonside before having had to face the thing. 

Seemed humans weren’t as affected, from the same dimension or no.

/Well, that’s it then. Need to lean on the human side. Put wee Willie back in the driver’s seat./ The plonker might be valiant as the member of a knitting circle, but at least he wasn’t a demon ready to fall down and worship the fucking thing. /I’m not here to fight anyway./ He stared up at the enormous monster coming for them, tentacles waving like mobile, animated redwoods of death. /Couldn’t, could I, even if the demon wanted to./ It was one thing to spar with Illyria when she’d been trapped in her human shell. Even then, she had outclassed him. Had been little more for him than a nice outlet for a vamp with a masochism complex who had badly missed fighting as foreplay, and needed to take the edge off before heading down to his flat for a nice wank and thoughts of a certain goldilocks long lost to him. /Get a little beat down till you can’t fight it anymore. Till you feel you deserve it. Till you can let yourself want it. Then…/

But this thing? 

Not ruddy likely. One hit from one of those massive fucking death-muscles and it’d be all over for Spikey. Not playing, this one. 

/Beddy-bye for you, my lad/ he thought, and wrestled his stronger side to the back of his mind. His game face slipped away. Along with it went his ferocity, his impulsiveness. His blood-lust, his rage… 

All that was left was concern. A constant, earnest terror for his love. A deep and abiding, desperate need to find her, now, before it was too late. And, yes, there was a heavy sense of imposing presence above and before him from the Old One looming over the city, but it was nothing like to the feeling of almost inexorable obeisance that had so cowed his demon only moments before. /See, sometimes having gotten that bloody soul back in the front seat comes with a few perks, yeah?/

“What are you _doing?”_ Angel half-screamed in his ear as they swooped mindlessly closer. It caught Spike’s attention, and he noted abruptly that they had gotten… Well, maybe a bit too near to the thing for comfort. That the dragon was trembling under his thighs, for which he couldn’t blame the thing, considering how he had only recently felt when coming into close proximity. 

“Sorry,” he muttered blandly. “Wasn’t paying attention.” He pulled the fluttering dragon up into an awkward hover. 

“Never mind!” Angel shouted back. “Just… Let’s do this and get out of here! Can you feel her anywhere?”

/Oh. Right./ Opening up to the call of his blood, Spike cast about him, concentrating. Frowned. She should be nearby. He could swear that when they’d first set out he could feel her pulling at him from this direction; sodding exhausted, maybe injured, definitely a bit distant. Yet now he would take an oath on’t she was somewhere… behind them?

Swearing, he kicked the dragon around in a circle, away from the marauding Illyria, and steered them back the way they had come. “Where the fuck _are_ you, Buffy?”

***

He couldn’t pinpoint her. They crossed the ground between the enraged, primordial Illyria and the Hyperion at least three times, quartering the air above that embattled six miles with tireless eyes and an increasing devastation, and in the end all Spike was able to report was that she was on the move, somewhere. Behind them, before them, hurt and… somehow oddly blank to him. And for the love of all the holies, just what the bloody fuck had happened to his girl?

They turned back finally, clinging to the exhausted dragon as it dipped its wings to make the last, long, looping turn; because frankly, they had accomplished nothing in their sortie, and there was fuck-all left to do but wait. Wait for Buffy. Wait for their doom, too, apparently, because Illyria was still coming on like some unstoppable behemoth, and Christ, what a bleeding day. 

They landed, the dragon skidding to a halt in the Hyperion parking lot. Spike slithered off the thing’s scaly back, Angel just behind him, and barely noticed as their resident pet demon turned to hop-trot around toward the back and the quadrangle that was its little ‘stable’. Probably to hide and wait for the end, since all around them, from the moment they came in contact with the earth, the endless thudding could be felt from heels to balls to the roots of their teeth and every sodding thing between. 

Illyria’s stride, then, drawing nearer. The knell of their doom. It drew the eye to the horizon, where the monster hove ever closer. 

And between them, somewhere in those intervening miles… /Oh, sodding Christ, Buffy, where the bloody hell did you go?/ 

“Is she… still alive, at least?” Angel asked quietly. He sounded as demoralized as Spike felt. “Can you… feel her?”

“Yeah.” Spike shuddered with it as it tore him in two. Shoved his hands in his pockets to stop them fiddling with something. Anything. Chain-smoking, screwing with his rings, whatever. “She’s alive. She’s hurt.” /She needs me. Fucking Christ, if I could just _pinpoint_…/

His head jerked up. /Balls, how’d you miss it, if she was so bleedin’ close?/

“What?” Angel demanded, reading the tension in Spike’s frame.

The pull was incredible. Made him feel like striking out now, in the indicated direction. It felt as if she were just around the corner; like at any moment she might just come marching round the bend and meet them, and bloody hell. He couldn’t sodding help it. 

He started. He simply had no control over his body at the mo’. She just felt so fucking near to.

Angel seemed startled, but moved in step to keep up. “Spike…”

He couldn’t speak. Turned on the speed, hope singing through him. Swiftly becoming certainty. And pointed with his sword-hilts. Broke into a jog that turned almost immediately into a run, if a clumsy one. Fought to keep his feet as the impacts of the distant, rampaging Old One threatened to bring him to his knees. “Fucking Christ, Buffy.” He had seen her, rounding the bend from Pico; a vision of a dashed and tarnished heaven.

Angel broke into a run behind him, but he was barely paying attention. He crashed into her, caught her up, held her tight to know she was real… And sodding Christ, she seemed lifeless in his arms. Broken, listless. “Buffy, what…”

Her eyes rose to his, a clouded hazel. “Annabelle, Chloe, Amanda, Colleen, Anya. Xander’s eye. Gris. Now Groo…”

/Oh, bloody hell./ Groo was gone, then. “Buffy…”

“You too, but at least I got you back. Annabelle, Chloe, Amanda, Colleen, Anya. Xander’s eye. You. Gris. Groo…” 

Sodding fuck; had she been repeating a list of the dead and the lost all the way back, and laying them at her own feet like this? 

What was he even asking? Of fucking _course_ she had been. “Buffy, stop. Whatever happened to Groo, it wasn’t your fault…”

Her eyes on his were as dead. Not even agonized. Dead, distant, damn near listless. “Always is, somehow, though. No way to win, you know? Either way, I make a choice, and someone dies, or they lose everything. Annabelle, Chloe, Amanda, Colleen, Anya. Xander’s eye. You. Gris. Groo…” 

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

He shook her. “Bloody stop it. _Dammit_, Slayer…” 

It was like she had lost the ability to hear. “I couldn’t reach him. Couldn’t help. He wouldn’t even have been there if I didn’t… I was in front. I was leading. Annabelle, Chloe, Amanda, Colleen, Anya. Xander’s eye. You. Gris. Groo…” It beat along with the distant thudding; like a metronome of agony.

“Oh, fucking Christ.” She was beyond exhausted. Lost in grief. Couldn’t hear a bloody word. 

He scooped her up. Reeled a bit as his balance fell victim to the quaking of the earth. Righted himself and came on, growling impatiently.

“Spike, what the hell is she talking about?” Angel had one paw out—maybe to steady them, maybe to touch Buffy—concern leaching from him. 

Spike managed to get one hand out to slap the proffered palm away. “Leave it,” he growled. /I’ve got her./

“But she’s...”

He lifted his eyes; knew they were blazing into Angel’s. “I mean it, Peaches. Back off. You can’t help her right now.” And his gaze drifted back down, knew the softness that came into it might sound maudlin, but it was all he had left. “You weren’t there to see what she lost in that last battle. What it cost her.”

Angel drew back as if Spike had electrocuted him. “I had my own problems, Spike, and she _told_ me to go!”

/Don’t have time for you, Pops./ He didn’t even bother to muster up irritation when he answered. All his focus was on his battered, soul-sore Slayer, his voice gentle with it. “Not sayin’ it to tell you you were wrong. Just sayin’… she needs someone right now who was there. She just lost another soldier, and she’s gonna be broken up about it for the hell of a while.” He hefted his woman in his arms; his incredible general of a mate. Would never call her that to her face—his—but now, in this brief instant… God. She was letting herself be, just for a moment, as he drew her close. 

In that instant she recalled herself. He felt it in her tremble; just a tiny thing that came when her face found the hollow in his neck. When she let herself rest for that briefest second. But then guilt once more sang through her; through the link that was their blood, and she tensed. Fought to hold back from him when she ought to let herself go. Bury her being, even for a moment. He knew she feared to lose herself, could feel her fighting still to stay strong and separate. It was as if she believed didn’t deserve a moment of comfort, when, Christ; she’d _fought_ that immense thing. Because of _course_ she had. She knew no sodding fear. Had _survived_, somehow; lost companion and mount, walked six or so miles back, and was _still_ fighting. What a fucking warrior!

But where once she would have pushed him away, insisted instead on standing on her own two feet… she was letting him take some of the load. She was allowing him to comfort her, hold her together. It was more than he had ever been given, before that one night back in Sunnydale, and more than either of them had ever expected. Enough, and it softened him, voice and all. Quieted all concerns for the future, muted the clock of terror coming closer, shaking the world. 

She deserved a moment to get herself back together, whatever happened next for all of them. 

He shot a glance over his shoulder at the looming presence drawing ever nearer. “Not that it might matter soon, Angel, but there’s something you _can_ do, if you really wanna help.”

“Anything,” the older man answered, vibrant with anxiety.

“Filch her something to eat. Get her some water. I’ll see she gets it down.”

It was clear that being slotted into the role of errand-boy didn’t exactly sit right with Peaches, but after a moment he agreed, for Buffy’s sake. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Not trusting himself to speak further, Spike hitched the precious form of his Slayer a bit closer and, still weaving a bit, ducked under the striped awning. Lurched into the dome of the Hyperion lobby. _Thud...thud...thud. _Staggered straightaway across and down their stair toward their quiet inner sanctum. The bomb-shelter of the place would prove, perhaps, some small protection against what was coming. And it would mute the noise that was the knell of approaching death. “You’re safe for the mo’, Love,” he murmured to her as he sat them safely down. “And bleedin’ Christ, you’re one courageous chit, you know that? I don’t know what the hell you were thinking, but you’re fucking amazing, to have come away from _that_ in one piece…”

He was answered with silence, at first, then, in a small voice, “Groo.”

He caressed her hair back behind her ear, where it had come loose in wisps and faint, messy waves. “I know. I’m sorry, luv. Do you wanna tell me?”

She shook her head violently. “I can’t,” she whispered. “Not right now. I need to stop… seeing it.”

He wouldn’t berate her for going. Not right now. But. “I can help with that much at least, I s’pose. Tell you a story. Recite you something. Sing, even. Reckon you earned it, today…” /End of everything and all. Least I can do is go out giving you what you always ask of me./ His heart, no longer a traitorous thing but a swelling beacon, shone, lighting his way always in her direction. /Bloody hell… Anything you ask of me, Buffy. My heart, my soul, my body. _Anything_./

“I didn’t mean to go without you.” It came out; slow and halting, even though he had not meant fear or frustration to leak. “I was going to wait. But then…” Harlequin eyes staring, clouded with memory. “We were just going to see what all the noise was about. And then we saw… her. It. Coming.” Her perfect, broken face twisted. Turned away. “I tried to keep my promise, Spike. To stay safe. I wasn’t trying to… die. We were just going to try to sting her into turning. Get her off our path. But then she got Groo, and…” Her breath hitched, and he caught her close, pinned her to him from the side before she could fall apart. 

“Shhh, love, shh, I understand. I’m not brassed at you.” Anything to call a halt to the devastation in her voice. “I don’t think anyone could’ve done any better…”

“She didn’t turn. She’s coming right for us.” A world of failure colored her tone. “I’m supposed to stop these things. It’s my _job_. And I couldn’t even piss her off enough to turn her aside. She’s still coming…”

/Oh Christ./ “You can’t stop every apocalypse, Love. At some point we’re going to have to face a losing scenario and see how that plays out.” And didn’t that make a bloke want to light a fag and smile ironically into the end of the world? /S'pose it's better than watchin' each other starve, at that./ He tried and failed to be pleased, though he knew... /We could have had so much more time./

“I guess… I know that. Intellectually I know it, but in my gut…” The tremors were increasing. “I’ve never failed the people who depend on me. And this one’s…” Haunted eyes, staring in the dark. “My fault she’s here; just like it was my fault, really, that we had to fight The First.”

/What the fuck?/ It floored him that she would take that on, and he blurted his stunned rebuke before he could even think whether to speak. “Where the bloody fuck do you get off thinking…” 

She went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “My fault Groo died. He did more than I did even though it wasn’t his responsibility, and now he’s gone. Just one more life I led into one more apocalypse, and it didn’t do a thing to stop it…”

That hadn’t even been what he was talking about, but, just, fucking no. “Buffy, shut it and listen to me, for Chrissake. First of all, if Groo died in combat it was what he wanted! That bloke was all for dyin’ for king and country, yeah? It was his _raison d’etre_ and all that shite; especially after the way his bird went! Know exactly how he felt; and you know I’m right, so don’t go pretending you think you could’ve stopped him…”

She looked away. He wasn’t having any of it, and caught her chin to bring her guilt-clouded, moss-and-sunlight eyes back to his. Christ, he hated to see the tears pooled there. Wished he could see to it she never had to shed another. His girl who had always had to carry too much on such narrow shoulders; but then she had been made strong enough, somehow, despite all that, to do it. “And for another, Buffy, what the hell makes you think this was any more your fault than anyone else’s? As much mine for going off half-cocked and letting Charlie-Boy get the jump on me. Angel for missing the blighter when he could’ve taken him down. Hell; Gunn’s the one who got her in this way, innit? So why is it that Buffy Summers always has to carry the full load of it all?” He was getting wound up now. “And as for the other, I’m not sure why in the buggering hell it’s your fault what happened at the hellmouth, when it was Red who brought you back…”

She interrupted him, voice colorless with shame. “I let myself get thralled by the Master. If I never died in the first place, the Line would never have been broken, and we would never have had to go down that road at all. If I’d paid more attention to Giles, been a better Slayer from the start…”

The broken, defeated tones, the denial of all she had had to survive as a new and scarcely-prepared infant, all she had surmounted and made her own... It made him rage. “You gonna take back Dawn, too?” he demanded, harsh and uncompromising.

She jumped in shock, staring at him, and yeah, maybe that stung, but he was riding on it now, desperate to knock her out of her rut before she ran herself aground. “Because that shite with old Batface had fuck-all to do with The First. Dying for Dawn did, and I know you’d do the same if ever you had to do it again, even with what it cost you, so the bleedin’ First is all on Red.” Her eyes, jerking to his, sparkled with shocked, awed tears, but he couldn’t stop now. He knew she wouldn’t give back little sis for any money, no matter how much harder it had made anything. No matter what it had done; to her, to them… 

God; no more would he. “Yeah, I said it. You know it’s true. And as to the other; you’d’ve never been _you_ if you’d done it some other way. You’d have been just like all the bloody others I met; died young like all the rest, sixteen and a virgin, at the hands of some thoughtless, opportunistic asshole like me. Or Angelus would’ve gotten you when you’d barely started living; or any one of a thousand lucky fledges, some night. The thing that makes you so soddin’ special, Buffy, is you make it your own. You persevere. You don’t do things by the book. I fucking _love_ that about you! It was what ensorcelled me from the start! So don’t you _ever_ start questioning what and who you are, or I’ll…”

Her eyes rose, beyond weary, though with a faint smile twitching at the corner of her lips. “What?” she asked softly. “Kill me yourself? You wore that one out a long time ago.” But her hands lay limp and dead in her lap, her whole body bowed. 

“Oh, bloody hell.” Pulling her close, he tucked her head under his chin. “You drive me to distraction, you know that, you mad bint?”

“I know,” she whispered, and turned her body a little, allowing him to hold her. Nestle her in closer. Comfort her.

“That’s my…” He halted himself, caught the taboo words before he spoke them aloud. “That’s the way, Love. Just let me hold you. If we survive the day, we’ll look at the next one fresh, and…”

“I am, you know. Your girl.”

He froze, and something peculiarly painful and warm clawed its way up; through his limbs, up his arms. Got its vicious talons right into the edges of his dead heart. 

He swore he felt it spasm. Almost like a beat. “Buffy…”

“I know. But I’m sure the hell no one else’s.” She shuttered her eyes so fiercely that he felt the lashes brush his throat, making him swallow painfully. Turned her face into the side of his neck and let out a long, shaky breath that warmed him through. “I have been since the first night I asked you to hold me.” A faint edge of self-recrimination entered her tones, and her fingers tightened on his sides, punching painfully into the cloth of his t-shirt. He never wanted the pain to stop. “I didn’t know you didn’t know that.” He thought he heard a sniffle. “I’m sorry I can only say these things to you when it’s the end of the world.”

He never wanted this moment to end. He could never have imagined… “Buffy, I…”

“I can’t deal, right now. With anything. I just know I don’t want to die anymore. Not now.” Her hands tightened; fierce on his sides. Pulled him closer, as if she were trying to make him a part of her. “Not now that we have this.”

/Oh, Christ… Oh God…/ Now. Fucking now, she wanted to live. With _him_. 

And the hell of it was, he did too, finally. More than anything. If she wanted it, then by all that ever was, he most certainly fucking wanted it. /Oh, yes, please./

“Please, just hold me forever?”

He managed breath enough to speak, somehow, though he knew it probably sounded precariously close to a sob. “I can do that,” he whispered. “From now until the end of time.”

***  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Let us all sing a joyous dirge for the Mighty Groosalugg. His death was as heroic, I hope, as he deserved.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... **more major character deaths here**. And some other deaths that hopefully will nearly be as affecting, considering the work I've put in. 
> 
> That's gonna be a major theme from here on out, sadly. No pulling of the punches in this deal.  
:(

**B:  
**  
Getting out of the path of mass-destruction had availed them nothing, in the end. Not because she… _it_ had sensed and followed them, and not because it had simply been laying waste to the entire dimension. Though, it—Illyria—kind of was. But slowly. Not all at once. It would probably get to them eventually. It was methodical in its destruction.

The Hyperion didn’t end up underfoot. Not that Buffy had been noticing much along about then. She probably wouldn’t have registered all that clearly getting flattened. She was with Spike. That was really all that mattered to her at the moment.

She could hear them all, now, as if from some enormous distance. “He must’ve managed to free her from Fred’s body somehow so that he could use his magicks to unleash her. But without Betta George he couldn’t convince her to turn back time…”

“Obviously, since we’re all still here. What the bloody hell does she mean by wrecking the place, though, if she likes it so damn much? And why the hell did she turn aside and miss us, if she’s the God-King Primordial again? She shouldn’t give one tinker’s damn about us anymore. Sparing us is right out!”

“Well, unless she remembers something about being Fred…”

“No, we all agreed that the only way he could make it work would be to wreck her mental connections to the chit’s personality. That thing out there doesn’t give a fig about us, so there must be some other reason why she’d turn aside.” 

That had been a surprise. Illyria knew exactly where they were all camped out, but somehow the buildings where they and all their allies were hiding had been spared the swath of destruction she made as she tore through the city. She had tromped on not a one of their troop haunts. It was unexpected, odd… and the kind of relief that made everyone feel like they were lying on a guillotine, looking up at a suspended blade and waiting for the executioner to signal the end.

“Unless she wants us for minions, I suppose,” Spike was saying, sounding thoughtful. “Thinks we’d make useful pets? She’d want worshipers, innit, missing the ones she has in our dimension.” Buffy thought she heard a frown in his voice. “Course, that doesn’t explain why she’d tear up the damn place, if she wants servants and the like. Could do with as many of them culled from the demon population. I know when I had my demon up front I wanted to fall right down and worship her, so any bloke comes from our world at least would fall right in line.”

Illyria better not finally get hooks into her demon, take her lover away at this stage of the game. The thought made something stir inside of Buffy’s numb mind and soul. Something that might even be… ire?

“Well, she wasn’t stopping to pick up worshipers when she went by earlier.”

“Yeah, she seems right brassed.”

Angel sounded tentative to her ears when he spoke up again. “What if… Spike; what if what she really wanted this whole time was to go back to being Fred? What if that was what all those switches back and forth were about? Her trying to be Fred. To be a part of the group, because we’re all she has anymore, and now that Gunn’s taken that away from her, all she wants is to wreck everything?”

Buffy swore she thought she heard her guy sputter. “Noelle said the same damn thing back when we first took over the Palace. She even said once that she felt like Fred was valued more than she is… but that was when she was stuck in the bleedin' shell. It doesn’t make any damn sense if she’s back to what she was! Why the hell would she want to be Fred, when being full-on Illyria gives her all these fucking abilities, makes her bloody near invulnerable?” Spike sounded dumbfounded. “Christ, Angel… why should she want that back especially _now_, when she finally has her unlimited power back? That’s all she’s wanted this whole soddin' time!”

“Is it? Do you want to go back to who you were before you met Buffy? Before the soul, before all of it? Would you take it all back to be a footloose and fancy-free vampire, if it meant you lost all connection with everyone who mattered?”

/Oh./

God, _would_ he? 

Buffy almost didn’t want to hear him answer. Waited through the short silence, an anxiety she hadn’t known she had any longer rocking her even through the numb pain of the now. /I just don’t seem like much of a prize if it came down to… getting all that back. His pride, his reputation, his freedom…/ 

“I think you know the answer to that, but this isn’t _about_ me, Peaches. This is about the bleedin’ God-King of the Primordium. She’ll want it back if she can have it…”

/He didn’t answer. Oh God… he’d take it all back. If he had the chance, he’d give me up and go back./

“What _for_, Spike? She doesn’t have her armies. All her worshipers are long gone. This isn’t even her plane. She’s been forgotten; and we’ve made her realize that humans have value as individuals rather than just as servants. We’ve ruined it for her. She’s felt love, of a kind; for Wes, and affection for the rest of us… and more importantly, she’s empathic. She’s felt _ours_ for Fred. Felt it bleed over onto her. She’s probably never felt that kind of emotion pointed toward her in her millennia of existence. What the hell would she get out of ruling the universe, at this point, but loneliness?”

Another silence, then, “Rule alone at the top, or feel companionship in relative ignominy, is it?”

It had been his choice… but it had been forced upon him. God, no wonder he felt such a kinship with the blue woman.

Except, Illyria had been caged by a body and a spell. Without the chip, Spike’s cage was… 

/Me. Loving me. And that I need him./

God, she needed to get out of here. Needed to run…

“What did you choose? More importantly, what would you choose if someone tore it all away from you? If someone killed Buffy and Dawn, ripped your soul away and forced you to go back to living like you used to? Said you had to, or everyone else you remotely cared about would die?”

Spike’s voice went cold at that. “S’pose along about then I’d say the world could go hang. I’d want to go out with an even bigger finish; take as many of the bastards with me as I could.”

/Wait. What?/ 

Sitting up straight, Buffy stared at her guy where he stood, rigid and glaring at Angel. And caught it as he turned, just a hair, to glance at her briefly with a hard glint in his eye that said…

/Oh. Oh, God…/ That he would fight to keep… /Keep _this?_ But why? Why, when we’re a cage to you? Why would you…/

“I think that’s what she’s trying to do. Tear up this dimension, because it belongs to the Senior Partners, and they took away Wes, took away Gunn… ultimately took away her last chance at fitting in and finding a place. I think…” A pause, sounding far away. “I think this is rage and grief, maybe even desperation. Because for her, there’s nothing left.”

“Christ, what the hell can we do about that? She’s more than we can take down; even with Buffy, and she’s a wreck.”

Buffy tried to force herself to her feet. She had a goddamned _job_ to do! People to save, mistakes to rectify…

But for some reason she couldn’t seem to make her body work. /Mistakes./ Such a paltry word when all she kept seeing in her mind’s eye every time she tried to move… was Groo. 

Falling. 

Crushed. Those dozens of massive, incredibly strong tentacles, grinding him to a pulp… And the sound of him. Screaming.

Gurgling.

Cutting off. 

And behind his face, his death, so many other faces, flashing. Those girls, fighting for their lives in the hellmouth. Xander, always wearing the eyepatch, now; and beyond broken, without Anya. Gris, her emerald countenance laced with black-edged, lime-lace burns, when she finally guttered out. Rinne, holding her hand when the last breath slid out of her…

Spike’s eyes on her as the incandescent glare of the amulet began to tear him apart, molecule by molecule. Flames, spurting between their fingers, burning their clasped hands. His _eyes,_ saying he was done. He was ready, she had finally driven him hard enough to leave her. That he didn’t want her to love him. Not when he had to go…

Falling. Crushed. Cut. Slashed. Dismembered. Soul-crushed. Burned to ash. /My fault. Even if she’s not coming for us just this minute. My fault. I bit off more than I could chew, finally. My fault. I went too big and now there’s no going home. My fault. Definitely no going home for Groo. My fault. That big, childlike, sweet…

/My fault./

“Do you hear that?”

“Spike, I can’t hear anything you can hear anymore, remember?” Angel’s cantankerous reply cut through the drumbeat of Buffy’s guilt, dragged at her attention.

“It sounds like marching. Like a bleedin' army going by.”

As one the current and ex-vampires headed for the doors. Curious enough that it somehow uprooted her from her paralysis, Buffy stuttered to her feet and trailed after them; off the roundel of the silky gray borne setee to fetch up between them at the window. As she joined them Spike’s hand slipped down automatically to brush hers, cool fingers catching at her pinky, threading into hers. She felt like she could breathe again as his palm snugged up against her own, and her heartbeat thudded tight against the firm anchor of his solid, real flesh. 

It took a minute to see it, but then… There. Between the ruins of a Starbucks—_god,_ she missed coffee—and some kind of diner out there on the end of their short street, they caught glimpses. Endless lines of marching feet. Standard humanoid demons, some of them, in varying guises. Some of the spider-demons. A few that looked a little like animated crabs or something, complete with snapping claws and thrashing tentacles. Some bigger ones, too. A few that looked like… Wow. Dinosaurs? /Oh my God, were dinosaurs really just a kind of demon who ruled the earth in one age and then died out?/ 

And that was a rabbit-hole no one should go down without a Giles around. 

At least there were no dragons. Maybe they’d gotten them all, between electrical attacks and just plain hacking and bashing. But you didn’t need dragons when you had numbers, and there were a _lot _of demons out there. They washed across the intersection, down Pico like a flood, and dammit, this wasn’t _fair_. Where were all these demon armies _coming_ from?

“Didn’t we already crash this party?” Angel demanded, because sometimes even he could read her mind.

Spike’s hand spasmed sharply in Buffy’s, startling her. “It’s why she didn’t attack us,” he murmured, sounding stunned. “She was preoccupied.”

It was enough to draw Buffy out of her guilt-induced silence. “She was going after these guys?”

“Look at ‘em.” Spike pointed sharply with his chin, eyes shrewd. “Looks like a rout to me. They’re running in the other direction. I think they had a bit of a rude awakening, trying to fight our resident Old One.”

Angel’s voice crackled thoughtfully. “If that’s true, then she’ll be coming back this way soon.”

Buffy glanced back at him, not really liking the sound of that. “Why? Won’t she be busy chasing them, still?”

“They’re coming this way,” he reasoned, nodding at the passing figures. “It stands to reason that she will be too; probably soon.”

He had a point. “So… how do we deal with her?”

Both guys stared at her as if she had lost her mind.

“What?” she demanded, still feeling a little numb, but at least a tiny bit more functional. “If there’re some new players on the board at least it buys us time to come up with something. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of huddling here waiting to die.” /And clearly it wasn’t the best for my psyche./

This time the squeeze to her hand came accompanied with a rush of pride through their shared blood. “Buffy’s right. Maybe we can get Betta George to scan her when she next stalks by. See if he can get a bead on her thought processes? Find a chink in her armor, or at least suss out her motivations.”

Angel frowned morosely. “If your fish-friend can even read an Old One.”

Spike shrugged as if wholly unconcerned, eyes still on Buffy. “He did it before, when she was playing at Fred Sonja. Don’t see why he can’t still get something from her as she is now, innit?”

“It’s worth a try,” Buffy agreed softly.

Angel shrugged and turned away from the window. “I’ll go get him.”

“You do that.” Those sapphire eyes had never left hers. As their companion moved for the courtyard and his dragon, he turned them, caught her other hand. “I wouldn’t go back, you know,” he murmured, and squeezed her other hand between his fingers.

“What?” she asked, startled by the non-sequitur.

“I know what you’re thinking, Love. Can read you like a book, yeah? I especially know how you think when you’re havin’ a crisis, start questioning what you’re worth, and I won’t have it. Because you’re still the One.” He loosed one hand to brush her hair from her face, smiled that tiny smile that always destroyed her. “You think I’d trade this to go back to livin’ alone, taking blood and rampaging around without a care for the lives I was destroying?”

It trembled in her. “You’d be free.”

“No.” His answer was immediate. “I’d be haunted.”

“Wh…”

“You’d already changed me, Buffy, before all that. Soul or no soul… I could never go back. Couldn’t take a single life like I used to without seeing your face, or the Bit’s…” He shrugged, a small, vulnerable smile touching the corners of his gorgeous mouth. His incredible eyes. “And I wouldn’t have _you_.”

It rocked her. “God, that’s so much to put on me, Spike.”

The smile widened. “You can handle it, Buffy. You’ve got strong shoulders.”

“So do you,” she heard herself whisper, and lifted her free hand to touch one. Ran it down along the curve and swell of it, cupped his deltoid. Held on. “You can handle what no one else has been able to.” It awed her, sometimes, that he was the one who had given her this.

The caress continued, brushing at her hair. And then he cupped her face gently. “What’s that, Buffy?”

Her eyes locked on his. “Taking care of me. Putting up with me. Just… _staying_, no matter what I throw at you…”

She was startled when he lifted her left hand in his right, held it to his lips; an old, chivalrous gesture that must have come from his past. And, to her stunned amazement, he sank to his knees with his lips pressed there, to her knuckles. “It has been, and always will be, my honor.” And his voice, when he said it, throbbed, with barely a trace of his normal tones there. He sounded almost… courtly.

/Oh God…/ That… that was his past life, leaching through. And what had she done to deserve this man? Her hand clenched hard on his shoulder as she clung to him. “I just don’t want to be a trap for you. A cage, or a…”

“You’re my _home_.” His eyes shone as he looked at her; blue fire. “My anchor, my lodestone; my fixed point in the universe. I’ve always been a satellite, Buffy, but for the first time in my life, I get to orbit something safe, real, certain. You’re giving me something strong enough to hold to as I learn what it is to anchor myself, and that’s…”

She closed her eyes for a sec, breathing hard against the tears that threatened. “Spike…”

“I’ll make you a deal, Slayer. You hang on, and I will. Yeah?”

His hand remained, holding hers, and… God, it felt profound. Like a proposal or something. And it left no question in her mind. “Yes,” she answered, very softly, and met his gaze, firm and certain. “Always.”

He rose then, and met her mouth with his own. She thought maybe she might be crying, a little, while he kissed her and she kissed him back… but she couldn’t be sure, because all she could feel in that moment was his arms around her, his body against hers; familiar as breathing. The _rightness_ of it all.

In the end, his forehead against hers, suspended out of time. No guilt, no death, no loss. No fight, no apocalypse, no heaven and no hell. Only _this_. 

“Then none of that out there matters.” 

And none of it did. For a moment… there was nothing else.

***

\--Well… we’re in a world of hurt, you guys. Queen Primordial over there believes she’s doing what this Fred of yours would want. She thinks the chick she used to be would want her to end everyone’s suffering…--

“Oh, bleeding balls…”

\--Gunn wanted her to do the thing with the time-loop, but she’s all hung up over the meaninglessness of her existence now she’s back in the big bod.-- Betta George sounded pretty much ready to throw in the towel. --From what I got from her just now I think she’s decided that if she can’t bring order to the damn place and she can’t become this Fred girl again, she’s just going to bring it all down. End all existence. Unravel the reality of the dimension…--

“Are you _kidding_ me? She wants to be Fred that _bad?” _Angel was clearly incredulous.

\--Apparently you guys and this Wes dude made a hell of an impression on her.--

“Guess so. Bloody fuck.”

“Love can do that to a person,” Buffy murmured, impressed but not surprised. /If it could change _me _this much, then a demonic god-monster can’t be that hard a sell, right?/

Spike’s eyes on her turned assessing. Angel just winced a little. 

\--Well, love or no love,-- George went on, --she’s not happy about it anymore. I don’t think it’s working for her, so I think we should all duck and cover…--

“No.” Angel’s voice firmed. “If Fred’s memories are still there and still affecting her, then that’s our one advantage, and her one weakness. We need to exploit it before she manages to destroy us all.”

That caught all their attention. “What, you wanna risk heading out to chat with the thing?” Spike asked sarcastically. “Hope she won’t rip you to shreds like our pal Groo, for old times’ sake?” But his hand on Buffy’s was rock-solid in the firm certitude that that was not her fault.

It didn’t help, but it was nice of him to hang on with her anyway.

Angel made a sour face at his childer. “No, Spike,” he answered witheringly. “Though, she didn’t care about Groo, and doesn’t care about Buffy, so no offense Buffy, but I think you should stay out of her way.” And dark eyes sought hers, begging for, if not compliance, at least some modicum of cooperation. Buffy did not exactly agree, but watched him steadily, waiting for the great revelation. Was there supposed to be a plan in this, somewhere? “All I’m saying is, maybe we can find a way to, I dunno…” He shot Betta George a querying glance. “Is there some way we can, maybe… load you up with memories of Fred? And maybe you can… dump them on her somehow? One of her abilities is empathy. She should be able to receive what you’re sending, right?”

George looked startled at that. --I’ve never tried it, but… I guess I could give it a shot. Gunn had me build up my range pretty far when he had me.-- And a stubborn note entered his bubbly voice. --From minimum safe distance, though. I don’t want to get turned into a fish patty.--

Spike was frowning. “That’s all well and good, Peaches, but my memories of Fred, and even yours, might not be enough to convince her this isn’t what the chit would’ve wanted. If, I’m assuming, that’s what you’re going for, here. She barely tolerated you. She was fond of me, yeah, but she didn’t love either of us the way she loved Gunn, and the vamp we have out there’s a shadow of that man. The bloke she wanted is a ghost, and we haven’t seen him since their little visit, so unless you know how to contact him, I doubt we’re gonna see him again…”

“Yeah, that might be a problem.” Angel frowned pensively. “At first I thought he was linked to Wolfram and Hart, till he showed up to help me out at Gunn’s nest. But maybe he was freed when the building was destroyed, and only came back to help me for old time’s sake. Maybe he was released from his contract somehow when Gunn blew up the place…” 

“I’m still available, actually. It just took me some time to re-form.” 

They whirled as a unit, fish included, to stare at the figure now coalescing in the orange light from the hotel’s central skylight. Wesley was there, hovering between the huge, unlit lamps, with the outside light shining through him to give him form. “You don’t think the Senior Partners would let me off so easily, do you Angel?” 

His words, the faint tone of reproach in them, seemed to cut Angel to the bone, and he turned away a little, shoulders hunching. The ghost barely seemed to notice, though, transparent eyes washing over them all. “I can add my memories to the pool, if it means bringing Illyria back under control. The only issue then will be to see how you might get your friend, Mr. George, close enough to her to distract her long enough for the Senior Partners’ armies to bring her down.”

Buffy frowned at that, taken aback. “We don’t want her dead, do we? I mean, if we can find a way to stuff her back into her body…”

“The army interrupted Gunn while he was in the midst of prying her from her… shell. Fred’s body is being held in stasis by the spell, however I don’t know how much longer it will last, and I am not sure she could be forced to return to it at this point in any case. Nor that you could locate it and the requisite magickal artifacts in the time available in order to force such a maneuver. Especially since using those implements for that task is a difficult proposition. They have been… repossessed by other persons.”

That sounded like a hell of a setback. “By _who?”_ Buffy demanded, before Angel, mouth open, could beat her to it.

“The army.” Their ghostly friend sounded way too blasé about the whole thing. “The Senior Partners never meant Gunn to use them in that fashion; a realization that has thoroughly enraged our former companion.”

Angel sounded thrown by that. “What were they for, then?”

“To resurrect _you_, should you ever be killed by the dangers with which this dimension is fraught.”

Buffy was not the only one dumbfounded by this frank, unadorned response. She couldn’t quite swallow it. “But how does that even make sense? They took his demon away the minute he got here! Made him human! And he’s been their biggest enemy this whole time! Why _wouldn’t_ they want him to die?”

Wesley’s answer might have been for her, but his eyes remained on Angel’s, as if he were telegraphing some private message. “They believe he still have some part to play in their plans. They wish to use him in future to destroy the Earth as we know it. To cause it to be overrun with demons and to fill it with their tools; to make of it a demonic paradise. Angel, by virtue of his curse and the very weakness of his dual nature, is tailor-made for their cause.” His ghostly eyes glittered on the now-human man, glasses still somehow seeming to shine in the rusty light. “They will never let you Shanshu, Angel; no matter that you are now the only souled vampire who remains entitled to this prize.” 

Spike twitched against Buffy’s hand. She squeezed his back, hard. He had foregone that so-called ‘prize’ for good reason. /Let it go, Spike. You don’t need it./

“…Not so long as keeping you torn between two poles keeps you keen,” the ghost went on, now directly addressing her ex, “and yearning for that which only they can provide.”

Angel closed his eyes, breathing hard. “I don’t want it. Not if getting it ends up causing what you showed me when I was dying. All those bodies…” He trailed off, sounding haunted.

“What I showed you is a vision of what must be in order to save the world from what the Powers wish to occur, if you take Them up on their offer for what might seem to be a way out of the Partners’ hold over you.” The ghost’s voice hardened. “Beware, Angel. There is no escape from your dual nature save the Shanshu, for it is a part of you. This is why the Partners want you. It is why they will fight to keep you alive in this place, even as it is why they tricked you with the lure of mortality.”

/Wow… Why do these demonic Senior Partners have such a hardon for Angel?/ She watched her ex, pity blooming in her. And felt herself suddenly enormously grateful that she was no longer so personally caught up in that fight.

“How… do you know they’re going to work so hard to keep me alive?” Angel’s voice had a new, strange note to it, and his face had that one odd expression Buffy had only seen a couple of times before; the one that said he had an idea. A desperate one; the kind that tended to scare her.

“I questioned the army. They know I serve the Partners now; or at least that I’m bound to their service. I was able to extract certain information from the least intelligent of the dying after the rout.” His wraith’s head turned, caught Spike’s eye. “If Illyria… If she survives? Watch over her.”

Spike stared for a moment. Blinked. “I’ve been doin’ my best, mate.” He squared his shoulders, and Buffy could see the pain it caused him to take on the responsibility for what had occurred. “Sorry I haven’t done better.”

/Oh, Spike./

“It wasn’t your fault. Gunn is…” The ghost seemed to sighed a little; a zephyr on the breeze which moved nothing. “There is a great deal of water under that bridge. And what has happened to him here is not his fault. But.” A little nod. “She trusts you. And whether-or, I cannot any longer. I am bound to this mortal coil. So.”

Spike straightened. “You’ve my word, Wes. Till we get out of this I’ll do my best to see to it she’s taken care of.”

“That is all I can ask.” His eyes slid over Buffy; a cold feeling, as if she had been dipped in water, then moved over to Angel. “And… after?”

/Wait, what? After what?/

“Of course.”

“Thank you.”

Angel’s expression was flat. Fixed. “It’s a problem for me. You’re here. I’ve… done enough wrong on that front.” A tentative, hopeful light touched dark eyes. “Unless you think it’ll free you?”

The briefest of head-shakes, negating this possibility. “I am bound to them. Here, there; doesn’t matter a whit. But pay it no mind, Angel. She’s dead too, with nothing left of her to go on, whatever she might say. It doesn’t matter if I cannot return. You must do what you must.”

The dark eyes returned to that set expression. “You got it, Wes. I owe you way more than that.”

“Thank you, Angel.”

“Thank _you_. I appreciate the heads-up.”

Just what the hell were they talking about? She glanced over at Spike, wondering if he had caught anything from any of that, but his mouth was a pressed-together slash of irritation. He had missed it as well.

“Very well, then.” And without another word, the spook vanished from their sight.

As a pep-talk, it didn’t exactly fill the crowd with enormous confidence, did it?

“Angel,” Buffy broke the silence, “what the hell was that all about?”

“What?” He turned to regard her unblinking for a moment, gaze free of any awareness that her question had a single ounce of merit. All innocence, his eyes slid away. “You heard him, Buffy. We need to get Betta George close enough to Illyria to make this work.” And he turned to their fishy companion. “Did you get the memories from him?”

\--Oh, yeah,-- George answered, tones low and pained. --A whole boatload, when he was asking you guys to take care of her. That guy had it bad.--

“Yeah, he did. And you’ve got mine?”

George seemed to shake himself, lacy fins trembling with it. --Yeah.-- A quick glance in their direction, large eyes rolling. --Spike’s too.--

“Then we’re good to go.” Angel was all captain business all the sudden.

He was seriously hiding something.

“So, what’s the plan, Peaches?” Spike asked sardonically. Everything in his stance, his tone, told Buffy he knew it too.

“We should figure that out,” Angel answered. “Any ideas? Buffy?” But Buffy noticed, as they started spit-balling strategies, that he continued in every way to avoid her gaze.

***

The long dimensional night dragged on while they hammered out their options. Outside, Illyria continued to rampage through what remained of the City of Angels and Demons and, judging from the screaming cacophony, to wreak havoc on the army the Senior Partners had sent to stop it from totally wrecking their personal hell-dimension. 

Somehow the hellbeast that was their former companion had still managed to avoid stepping on every one of their haunts. According to both Lorne and Maria, all of the Silver Lake community and the Biltmore remained standing, as did the Figueroa, though only maybe five of their compatriots had set up shop down there. It gave them enough of a small army, as Spike put it, ‘to be going on with’. “What I figure is, we go in and distract her, yeah? She comes close enough to chase us instead, and then while we lead her off at right angles to George, he puts the whammy on her, and it’s off to the races.”

“Do you think enough of your girls will volunteer?”

Buffy tilted her head at Spike. Read his eyes, the reluctant tilt of his head. He didn’t want to risk anyone else, any more than she did. But. 

Buffy took this one, turning to Angel. “It’ll be up to them. Strictly volunteer basis. But Maria will go, and Rinne. Which means at least half of them will follow.” 

Angel looked a little anxious. “That’s not a very big army. Might not be enough to turn her. Do you think your Slayers will join up?”

It was a good question. And the answer was… she had no idea whatsoever. “They’re free agents. But they’ve impressed me before. We’ll see.”

They went to start rounding up the usual suspects. Got everyone in one room to make their recruitment speech; one at the Figueroa, one at the Biltmore. 

Maria jumped on board immediately at the former. “You know I have your back.”

“Maria!” Jamal, her werewolf-y beau exclaimed, sounding horrified. 

She just patted his hand, clearly unfazed. “It’s okay, Sweetie. We’re only going to be a distraction.”

“Only… You saw that thing! You can’t fight it! It’s _huge!”_

Buffy didn’t blame the guy for being upset. He was clearly head over heels for Maria, but he had no real loyalty to the Beverly Hills contingent. He had found his own way to the safehouse, had no interest in scratching the backs of any would-be rescuers or former demon-lords. The only reason he had thrown in with any of them at all was for Maria’s sake. 

Maria, though, was Spike’s. Entirely. “We won’t be fighting it. Spike and Buffy aren’t that dumb. But I go where they lead me. I have since we started this.” She smiled a little sadly at her guy. “Since way before you and me. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is.”

Which was where her boyfriend had lost it. “I can’t _believe_ you’re so loyal to these white-ass couple of blonds, when we could get out of here and stay safe! Seriously, girl, let’s just bail! Why are you letting them run you like this? You don’t owe them anything! You can’t keep letting ‘em boss you around like this! You _know_ that, right?”

Buffy had kind of felt like sneaking out of the door right about then. But had Maria just patted his hand. “It’s not about that. It’s about how we’ve all worked together before. It’s about how they came in knowing what to do, and how we all saved each other’s asses more than once. It’s about loyalty. And you know they aren’t _telling_ me. They’re asking for volunteers.” And she stood with a decisive nod. “You can stay or come, babe. I’m not gonna tell you what to do. But I need to do this.”

Jamal had turned a sort of grayish color beneath his light, golden-brown complexion. “I just found you,” he whispered anxiously. “What if I lose you?”

Maria had smiled at him a little shyly. “Come with me? Watch my back?”

It seemed a good idea to leave them to the debate.

Rinne… Rinne was a quieter sell. “Of course,” she said simply.

“You don’t have to. It’s strictly voluntary…”

Raw-looking dark eyes rose to meet theirs, fierce. “Gris… She would’ve wanted me to…” Her voice shook. “I’m going.”

Before Buffy could say ‘Okay,’ Spike broke in. “Thank you, Corinna.”

/Griselda and Corinna? What kind of names…/ 

“I’ll be at the Hyperion in an hour.”

They left to continue their rounds, sobered. And made their pitch to the rest of their people at the Biltmore, awash with an odd mix of inevitability and guilt. 

Out of the remaining members of the Spikettes only three declined to join—Eliana, Birina, and Daria—and, of course, as an aside, Tiny, but he had never been a combatant, so they hadn’t been counting on him anyway. A recovered Cheeks picked up a mace and growled as she stood right up to follow them, looking like a kamikaze, and Ms. Clean promptly began decorating basically her entire sleek body with every weapon she could find… so apparently some of them were just ready to die. 

The three young, messed-up slayerettes were a little harder a sell. They sat off to one side, behind the rest of the crowd, just listening to the pitch. And when it was over, they exchanged smirks, looking haughty and knowing as the crowd volunteered for positions. It wasn’t exactly heartening, much less an indication either way as to their intentions. But when everyone assembled at the Hyperion an hour or so later, they were there. So there was that.

Spike stood beside her as they prepared to march to meet their fate. It felt like any number of last stands they had made; an almost familiar mix of finality and inevitability, of inexorable, impending doom and a kind of emotionless calm that came when you knew that death waited, and hanging there before it, the tiniest shred of hope… and there was really not a whole hell of a lot you could do about it either way except fight and hope you ended up canting the finale toward the latter rather than the former. She and Spike didn’t look at each other as they stood side-by-side, loose and expectant, and set themselves to lead their small army out into the rust-colored remains of the day. 

It was times like this that, despite being fond of her Hell-A axe, Buffy found herself really missing the Scythe. It would come in handy, for one thing, considering the other was severely dented by this point from its last encounter with the Old One. Somehow she kind of felt like the bespelled Scythe would have stood up better against a demigod. For another thing, with the way she sometimes felt slightly less Slayer-y in this dimension, slightly more human (or maybe more like she had felt, say, before her first, her second deaths; it was hard to remember), having the Scythe on hand might have punched her up a little.

Well, the axe had been sharpened well enough to work, still. And if this sortie felt a little sudden, it needed to happen. She didn’t have time to find another weapon that fit her hand, so it would have to do. Spike’s favorite sword was a ragged mess as well, so they were kind of in the same boat. Hell-A had been kind of rough on their weapons.

Maybe this would be their last significant battle here. One could hope.

“Ready?” Angel asked Betta George, who was floating somewhere off to the left of their heads.

George seemed to be looking at Angel with an odd expression. Maybe. It was kind of hard to read his fishy face. --As I’ll ever be, I guess. Are you?--

/Okay? For what?/ Angel wasn’t going to be doing a whole lot. They’d all agreed he’d hang back, since he was kind of vulnerable right now.

They’d already had the whole fight about whether she should hang back here with him, since she wasn’t needed for the whole, ‘make Illyria remember who Fred was’ operation. But in the end she had flat-out informed him in no uncertain terms that she went where Spike went and that if he thought she was going to sit out the battle to cool her heels and be his bodyguard, he had lost his mind. She cared, of course, that he survived the day, but no way she was going to hang around protecting his ass when Spike was about to go up against Illyria, even in an oblique way. Not after what happened to Groo. 

Angel’s expression at that sally had been even more bizarre, and he’d waved her off with a strangely relieved look, which to be real, kind of made her suspicious.

As did, right now, Betta George’s question. What the hell did Angel need to be ready for, honestly?

“Yeah,” Angel answered the fish, and there was a really weird, set expression on Angel’s face that, now that she looked at it, kind of worried Buffy. 

“Hey,” he called, catching her attention. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

Exchanging a brief glance with Spike, Buffy stepped aside to where her ex hovered beside the concierge desk. “What’s up?” Maybe she could at least get to the bottom of whatever the dork had been hiding from all of them.

“I just wanted to tell you… Just in case…”

/Oh, man./ This was going to be one of those deathbed confession things, wasn’t it. “Angel, we’re all gonna be fine, or we’re all gonna die, so what’s the point?”

He winced. “It isn’t what you think. I, um, left something out of what I told you about what Cordy said to me when I saw her, when I was dying…”

/Um, okay?/ “Which was?” Fair to say Buffy was feeling totally lost, now.

“She, uh, told me…” He jerked his chin upward and to one side, to indicate Spike… and suddenly every inch of his being seemed to radiate reluctance. Discomfort, even frustration, but also a kind of… defeat. “…That we’re different. Him and me. I have a soul because I have work to do on my own… but he got a soul because he’s linked to _you_. He became a Champion because of you…”

/Oh./ Well, that made an obvious kind of sense. Deep inside, Buffy had always known that, so she merely nodded. It wasn’t really a revelation. To her mind it didn’t take anything away from Spike the way it seemed to for Angel. He had stayed away since; to become his own man, find out who he was, finally, without the necessity he had always had to mold himself into being whatever the woman he loved needed of him. He had discovered what he needed to know as a Champion in his own right, here in LA, both before and after she had returned to scoop him up. 

He had earned the title, with and without the whole having burned to ashes for the whole world thing.

“I guess,” Angel went on softly, “that’s why she didn’t foresee him when she came back for a day to get me back on track…" His face twisted slightly, and he looked down at his shoes. "Because he has nothing to do with the Shanshu Prophecy…” 

Something inside Buffy relaxed, a tension flowing out of her. /Thank God./ 

“…Nothing to do with this struggle between the Powers and the Partners the way I do. I guess his being there was kind of incidental.”

Angel would never know what a relief it was for her to hear that Spike was never in the running for his stupid ‘turn the vamp human’ prophecy. But as to the ‘incidental’ part, Angel should have already known that, since he was the idiot who had kept her guy there for months without telling her Spike was alive.

“They used him anyway, of course. Just another tool to screw with my head for a while, since they had him here. She said I was the one They wanted, because I was the equivocal one, the one They can sway…”

Interesting, since it implied that Spike _couldn’t_ be swayed. No wonder Angel’s voice was so bleak. And it kind of confirmed a few things for Buffy; like, for one thing, the curse didn’t mean he couldn’t do icky things, just that he had to fight himself over the urge to do them.

“Because I was cursed,” he went on, “and I still wear the marks of that curse even if my soul was put back…” He paused, an odd frown of confusion sliding over his smooth features. “Put back in me in a different way than before?”

Startled, Buffy blinked at him. “Um, okay, what does that mean?” she demanded, feeling abruptly anxious. For sure Angel had acted a lot different in more than a few ways since he’d left for LA—heck, since he’d come back from hell—but she had attributed a lot of that to the whole ‘spent years in hell being tortured’ thing. If he’d come back different because Willow had screwed up the re-ensoulment somehow, that was a whole other ball of wax. 

“I dunno.” Angel shrugged it off. “Anyway, Cordy told me, ‘You’re still it, big guy’…” His eyes focused on hers, intent and unhappy, then flickered over to his get. 

Buffy saw it. He had surrendered. “And Spike’s mine.”

“Yeah. I guess… he is.”

“Because he can’t be swayed.”

Silence.

The triumphant heat balled inside her; expanded, roared. It was a soaring feeling, an ‘against-all-odds-and-appearances, I backed the right horse’ sort of feeling. “I don’t envy you what you have to go through, Angel,” she told him quietly, “but I’m sorry for it. And I thank you for telling me.”

His eyes darted away and down, an odd grief straining around his eyes. “It’s what I deserve." His mouth twisted. "And you’re welcome.” 

Then he stepped away.

/And that, Angel, is the main reason They’ll always be able to whack you around like this. Because you’ll always buy into it, always feel like you deserve it./ 

She wanted to feel bad for him, but… he was letting Them use him. Why couldn’t he _see_ it?

It was tragic, but it wasn’t hers to fix.

After a moment, Buffy returned to Spike’s side, feeling oddly lightened, if more than a little thrown by this revelation about the re-ensoulment. But she didn’t have time to examine that question too closely right now, because Spike was tapping her axe with his sword in what had become their little pre-battle toast. 

“Off we go, then?” he asked softly, and waited to see if she was back with him.

“Yeah.” Drawn into the present by his regard, she met his eyes soberly. They were about to head into battle. /And you’re mine. Mine forever. A representative of the Powers confirmed it, dammit./ “No one leaves,” she told him firmly, “no one dies, no one runs off to save anyone else, and no one has to kill anyone to save the world. Right?”

“It’s a sodding promise.” As he pulled his sword away from her blade, his eyes on hers were locked; solid and certain. “Back to back; through hell, till the day we get you back to heaven, Love.”

Buffy frowned at that codicil. “That would be me leaving.”

Spike grinned boyishly and adjusted his interim leather jacket on one shoulder. “Well, doubt they’d let me do any more than a quick conjugal visit at the gates. But you know that’s where I’ll be hovering. In limbo somewhere close, ‘cause you can’t be bloody rid of me.”

He filled her up. “I know it.” It was an awareness that used to frighten the hell out of her, but now… /I’m so damn glad./ “You ready?”

“As ever.”

It was a very short trip out to where Illyria waited. Easy to determine her path. You just followed the thudding, earthshaking tattoo of her mind-bending footfalls, the sounds of Downtown’s remaining buildings crashing to the ground as she rampaged around, knocking them down like dominoes. All around her, poking at her feet-tentacle-things like a bunch of totally-useless miniatures, the Senior Partners’ decimated armies darted around, bristling with weapons and looking thoroughly hopeless and terrifyingly driven as they accomplished exactly zilch except getting themselves repeatedly stepped on by an Old One who seemed by turns mildly irritated by their interference and occasionally just completely disinterested. Around her head, things that looked like weird, demonic attack-jets dive-bombed—and for the record, why did the bad guys always get such cool gadgets? That wasn’t fair!—but of course the massive, primordial god-king just swatted them down like flies. Sometimes she got them two at a time, like in that one old story where the guy was all, ‘Seven at one blow!’ except it was the giant who was winning against people in hang-gliders.

Not that she was rooting for these particular demons, obviously. She just appreciated their motivations right now, kind of felt like they had simpatico with her own at the current instant.

So. Anyway. The real tactical problem in a situation like this one was how to get remotely close enough to the enraged Old One to actually accomplish their task without either getting lost in the teeming masses of confused and pissed-off demon-spawn… or just simply getting flattened in the crossfire. For one, the stymied army out there might just as soon turn on them just to feel like they got to kill something, even if it wasn’t the intended target, as ignore them out of confusion as to who the hell their mixed-bag company was, really. And for the other… Well, if Illyria really intended to spare her former comrades for old times’ sake, she probably wouldn’t even recognize their vibes before she’d smooshed them, hidden as they’d be amongst all these hordes. Not to mention that once they got close enough for her to read their intent, all bets would probably be off.

Basically, that was what ended up happening. They snuck about halfway in under cover of confusion and general mayhem, since the stupider portions of the SP’s armies were busy just sort of milling around trying to figure out what the hell they were supposed to be doing at any given moment, and it was thus easy enough for a troop of demon-y looking sorts to sort of slither in amongst them without causing too much undue alarm. The problems started when they got closer to where the leaders were hanging out. You know, the guys who recognized their descriptions, and had the weight to throw around to start changing up the orders. 

That was when things got dicey.

In a general sense it was kind of tough to change the momentum of whole platoons of idiot demons once they had been set on their violent paths… but when they had been set to flinging themselves full-force, kamikaze-style, against something their every instinct told them to fall down and worship, they were very happy to get new orders to attack someone a little less imposing. So when several squads were detailed to turn aside from their pointless prodding at Illyria’s right flank (carapace? Whatever you wanted to call that) and instead come at their little platoon of Spikettes… well. Suffice it to say they didn’t take much encouragement to swing around and come howling at the ex-Beverly Hills contingent.

Luckily, by the time they got there, these guys were pretty damn exhausted, most of them were wounded, and their numbers had been severely whittled down. It made the fight a little more fair. Still, Buffy hadn’t been in a battle like this since the Turok-Han when it came to sheer numbers. And if most of them weren’t nearly as tough to kill even as a starved, not-yet-fed Turok-Han—like those chintzy spider-demons—some of them were damn near as tough as a well-fed and fully-powered-up ubervamp. 

In other words, there was variety. 

The fight went on for what seemed like hours, though probably it only lasted about thirty minutes in real time; about the same amount of time they had spent back at the beginning of all this, whipping ass up and down the street behind the Hyperion before those cheaters had sent the city into hell in the first damned place. The results were pretty much the same, too, considering they had even more people on their side this time. 

Angel vanished promptly the second they found the front, like a complete insano-guy. Just raced off to the left like some kind of completely random berserker, with the demon army melting in front of him in this really bizarre way; almost like they were afraid to fight him. His dragon showed up out of nowhere above them right afterward, screaming and belching fire, to dive at Illyria in his wake and shrieking defiance, as if unwilling to see him die without her assistance. 

Buffy stared after them both, utterly nonplussed. /Idiot’s gonna get himself killed./ 

So was the dragon, most likely, poor, stupid, loyal thing.

“Well… that’s a thing,” Spike observed blandly. “What the bloody hell is the prat up to, then? Wants to die, does he?”

Buffy shoved down the nausea, the terror leaping in her belly. The upswing of guilt, the fear that maybe this was because she had said what she had said to him up there on the balcony that day a while back, while he was still recuperating. Despite the lightness of Spike’s mystified comment, she was half-terrified that was her ex’s plan; human out here without backup in the middle of a vast battle.

But either way, there was literally nothing she could do about it. Not now. She by far had no time to go save Angel’s idiot ass if the suicidal dumbass wasn’t going to stay with the group. This was freaking _war_. Not to mention, she had a job to do, here beside Spike, and that was to lead, not to go haring off after one member of the sortie. /I have to focus on the now, I have to…/

The Spikettes had formed up around the Beverly Hills center and were going in; hollering all around them and screaming their ridiculous battle cry, (“All Bloody Hail!”). The three slayerettes, scattered throughout the pack, went in silent and deadly, slinking in an instinctive way that almost reminded Buffy of the way the First Slayer moved in the visions. Maybe being hunted did that to you.

In the center, the leaderly Slayer-vamp duo followed suit. As a whole, the good guys beat their way slowly through the masses. In their turn, the bad guys slowly melted back or gave way or died around them in stacks. 

Buffy and Spike went from fighting side-to-side to, eventually, back-to-back, and then back to side-to-side again as they gained some open ground nearer to the mind-bendingly loud, earth-shattering Illyria. Buffy tugged her now thoroughly dinged-up axe out of the torso of one of the commanders of the closest demon company, then leaned on it, hoping for a breather, and looked around her, scanning their people. “How are we doing?” /God, hopefully Angel’s still alive out there./

Spike followed her lead, his expression tightening slightly. “Not sure.” He shook out one hand, blood flying off of his fingers. “I think I saw Cheeks go down.” He hesitated. “And your girl Brenda.”

/Well… shit./ The wave of guilt and regret struck her dead-center, unleavened as ever, and she leaned harder on the axe. /I didn’t force her to come/ Buffy told herself grimly. /She chose./ And Cheeks. God. She’d been with them almost from the start. Since back when Burbank had set up and she’d come down from the Hills that one day, gaunt-cheeked and with the marks of privation all over her seal-furred form, some scrounged road-sign in her hand as a makeshift pike slung over her shoulder, all desperate, exhausted menace. ‘Hear you’re looking for demons who don’t mind working with humans. I’m don’t care either way as long as I don’t have to work with that bitch up north. You want me? I’m yours.’ And she had been. She had been so unbelievably loyal, with her silence and her steadfast, wordless willingness, and her…

“Damn.”

“Yeah.” She could hear it in his voice too. The regret. And, underneath it, the concern for _her_. For how _she_ was handling it.

No time for that now. Buffy raised her voice enough to be heard over the clashing noise of nearby skirmishes; little pockets of battle still going on to either side as their girls held the line, gave them room to dispatch the package. “Are we close enough?”

Spike never got the chance to answer. --I’ll try,-- Betta George answered for himself, floating in from somewhere off to their left, and began to make that low, bubbling sound that signified that he was making an attempt to connect. 

Off in the distance, still some several hundred feet away and looming so high above them that she wasn’t even visible at this angle, Illyria’s endless, mindlessly-loud, thudding peregrinations slowed. Came to a halt. There was a vast creaking sound, like the biggest tree anyone had ever heard in the universe, turning in gale-force winds… and the George gasped. --We’re still too far. But It knows. It knows now, what we’re trying to do. It’s coming! It’s _coming_ for us!-- 

Buffy had never heard him sound so terrified. 

“Scatter!” Spike bellowed, and the shocked squad of Spikettes broke, dodging to the left and right like chaff under the feet of the maddened monster. 

Every step ate what seemed like miles as Illyria waded in; and now she (It?) was definitely close enough. But Betta George was looking up, forever up, clearly overwhelmed in all his demon-y soul by the monstrous, god-like Old One coming in for his ultimate destruction; frozen in place and staring…

And, fuck; she was going to kill him!

Buffy forgot to think. Forgot promises, forgot everything as she ran back toward the shocked, terrified, floating fish. She had no idea what she was going to do against the enormous presence now leaning over him; she just knew she had to do _something_. George was their only hope, and all Buffy could see in her mind’s eye were massive tentacles… twisting. Crushing.

“Buffy, what the sodding hell are you _doing?”_

Spike was pounding after her. She could feel him; feel his terror, his rage, but it was secondary right now as she raced toward George with all she had, trying to beat the unfurling death from above…

Everything happened so fast then that Buffy almost couldn’t register it. First, Maria leaped out of nowhere on all eight legs to cross in front of her and swing her katana-like blade at one tentacle, trying to drive it away from George’s finny head. The sting of it seemed to irritate Illyria, and It flicked the tip of the tentacle the same way a human would swat at a mosquito. Maria wasn’t there anymore, though. The crazy woman had leaped up and was _crawling_ _up_ the writhing limb like an insane fly, jabbing all the way along it with the sword as she did so in the most completely insane attempt at distraction Buffy had ever seen in her entire life.

The next part happened in horrible slow-motion. First the tentacle reared back away from Betta George. Rolled up like a carpet. 

Then it grabbed Maria by her two back legs... and flung her so hard, the limbs tore off from the force of it, like someone might pluck the legs out of a spider for sport. Maria Harley flew about three hundred yards, to crash against the jagged remains of a glass-and-girder office building like a godawful, smashed bug.

When she landed, it was with a sickening, wet thud that left no doubt as to her state. 

_“Maria!”_ Jamal’s tormented scream was filled with all the horror Buffy felt, and he fluffed out a little more, his wolf-y side becoming as pronounced as ever it could in this hell. Buffy thought for a second he was going to attack as well, but then he turned to race away, toward his… Toward the body. 

“Oh, sodding Christ…” Spike had caught up to her, or at least was close enough for her to hear him. “Oh bloody hell, Maria…” 

But before either of them could really react, Rinne was there in Maria’s place, teeth bared in a green face almost chartreuse with stress and looking like she was courting death apurpose. “I’ll take you on, bitch! Leave the fish alone!” And she, too, leapt on the tentacle before it could descend again, and oh, god, all their girls were going to die, right here and now, trying to fight this impossible fight against Illyria, and oh my god, Betta George needed to snap out of it and do his thing, right now! 

This time when Buffy broke into a run she felt Spike running with her, right at her side, knew he was thinking the same thing as she. Get there before they lost Rinne too. They couldn’t lose her on top of Gris. Get to George. Shake him out of his stupor. Make him try again. It was their only hope. The only hope for _everyone_.

She could hear Rinne over there howling between blows, saying things like, “This is for my sister!” and, “So tired of everyone _dying!”_ But by the time they got there Rinne wasn’t screaming anymore. 

She was down, bleeding ichor from her mouth and nose and basically everywhere. It looked like her chest had been completely flattened, like there was no way she should even be breathing. But she had bought Betta George another few seconds. /Oh, God, Rinne…/ They passed her by as they pounded in, weapons out, caught her eyes as they went by, felt her nod just a little. /Just… Oh my God./ They were all going to go down one by one in this fight.

Spike had his hand out, as they drew close. Buffy put hers in his. This was it. They gripped their weapons tighter. Last stand. Drew closer, the colossal presence of the Eldest of Demons swamping their senses and dwarfing their beings. Came up level with the cowering Betta George where he hovered barely above the trampled, blood-soaked earth; moving now only because they were impelled by the sacrifices of people they had loved, and because they had each other. Looked up as one. Up, and up. You couldn’t see the top of the thing that had been the Illyria they’d known. It blotted out the sky; just a writhing mass of darkness and purple and tentacles waving, and… One was coming down, of course. Like an onyx redwood falling. Any second there would be nothing. “George,” Buffy gasped. “Do it. Please. Before it’s all over.”

\--Can’t…-- he bubble-moaned. --Can’t…-- And his fins were clasped to his head, and he was writhing. --So _big_, so much, too much…--

Illyria’s mind had touched him. And in this form the demigod was like the cosmos. It was so unthinkably huge that It had overwhelmed his mind. He was an empath… but so was Illyria. They had miscalculated. It was over. 

The darkness became absolute. There was no light left. A whooshing sound could be heard; the death-knell of their joint existence. A massive limb, descending, gaining speed. Any second it would blot them from reality. Maybe it would be over quick. No twisting rending, like for Groo. Maybe…

_“Stop… in the naaaame of love! Beeeefoooore you breaaaaak my heaaaart!”_

Buffy had never heard Lorne sing. Not really; not in full voice like that. She had heard him hum a little here and there, break into a bit of a note or two; but she hadn’t heard him seriously _sing_. 

Not only was he _good_, but he _affected_ you. She felt herself go stock-still, everything in her willed to stop fighting. Felt the trembling in Spike’s hand and arm still as well. Saw George, shaking beside them like he was on a fryer, slowly vibrate to a halt, eyes wide and staring. 

_“Think it o-o-ver! Think it o-o-ver!”_

Much more shockingly, the tentacle above them froze… and where the hell had he even _come_ from? 

_“Haven’t I been gooood to you? Haven’t I been swee-eet to you?_ _Think it o-o-ver… Think it o-o-ver.”_

Lorne, Buffy realized belatedly, was another empath. And he was seriously working the mojo right now, if he was able to use it against the perceptions of someone as overwhelming as an enraged, maddened Old One. 

The tentacle trembled overhead, undecided. /Dammit! _George!_/

“George!” Spike hissed, reading her mind. “Do it! Now, while there’s time!”

_“I’ve tried so hard, hard to be pa-tient… hoping you’d stop… this infatuation…” _The tall, green demon strode into sight, slim and put-together in his mayoral togs, standing like a very small and proud figure from another era, miniscule against his foe and yet compassionate and inexorable. His eyes were filled with sympathy and his throat vibrated with passion as he sang his heart out, putting everything he had into his single, non-violent weapon; the only one that had a chance of saving them all. _“But each time you are together… I’m so afraid I’ll be losing you forever! Stop… in the naaaame of love…”_

It was possibly the bravest thing Buffy had ever seen, and she had seen some damn courageous things in her time.

Something about that last lyric seemed to get to Betta George. Maybe it was even directed at him as much as to Illyria. The giant fish shook himself. The large, bulbous eyes narrowed. And determination reentered them. 

Lorne’s voice was starting to shake, the lines on his face to tremble. Illyria was using Its mojo on him; trying to counter his empathy with the sheer weight of Its demonic command-y-ness. His voice roughed. Faltered a little. 

The suspended tentacle started to fall once more. But this time it was swinging not toward Betta George, but toward the singing demon. _“Lorne!”_ Spike roared, and started for him, no doubt to dive on him and bring him to the ground.

And then an enormous, high-pitched screeching filled the air, like innumerable sirens from the loudest fire-engines in the world all going off at once. It was deafening, and Buffy covered her ears automatically. Spike did the same, and they tumbled to the ground on the sonic wave of it. Above them, all the tentacles were now flailing at once; dozens of them, everywhere. Everything was chaos, and all Buffy could think, if it could be called thinking, was to crawl over, grab Spike, get out of there. That was all. Nothing else. Nothing else made sense. Nothing else _could_. Not in that cacophony.

She found herself writhing, crawling; maybe toward her vampire, maybe away? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that at some point she found his hand, or maybe he found hers, and they were scrambling away from the overwhelming thudding and screeching and the horrible noise, and god, oh god…

And then there was a roar of what sounded like triumph from somewhere, one that sounded like it came from hundreds of throats, and the zooming sounds from above, the clashing of swords and pikes and who knew how many other vicious weapons breaking against incredibly hard chitin, and rushing boots, and clattering, chitinous feet, and the shrieking cut off into guttural moans and thudding and crashing and…

The sound of the paralyzed Illyria falling to the Senior Partners’ reserves was something that could not be described. It wasn’t really something that could be conceived of. Not really. Thunderous did not even begin to qualify as a descriptor. 

Buffy had been through earthquakes less shattering. 

The deafening silence that followed was also beyond description. Buffy lay tumbled against Spike in the wreckage of Downtown Los Angeles, stunned and incapable of thought or reaction for who knew how long, watching distantly through eyes blurred by dust and falling wreckage as the unaccountably vast creature with the vast, single blue eye and the enormous, toothy maw writhed under the weapons of a company of demons who paid little to no attention to anything else. 

“I was supposed to protect her.” Spike’s voice was a croak, filled with dust and agony. “I told Wes that I’d…”

It was the first thing either of them had said in a very long time.

“You can’t fight all of them.” Buffy swallowed against building dust and grit, feeling pretty damn terrible about it. She realized now she kind of really cared about Illyria too, even if right now It was a crazed, caged hellgod. Normally not her type for a buddy, but, you know. You got used to stuff. She coughed, fighting for her voice against a mouth drier than anything she had ever before experienced. “It wasn’t like she was letting us help her.”

Spike didn’t answer, or maybe he couldn’t… and they needed to do something. Get moving. Not just lay here. “We should…”

He started to push himself to his feet. Clearly he was thinking along her same lines. “We need to go find Maria. Rinne. Get…” He let out a pained breath. “Bring ‘em back, yeah?”

/Oh, God. The girls. Yeah./ “I. Yeah. And see if… Lorne… And George…”

Spike’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t reply.

They crept closer, if with great care to avoid the reveling demon troops currently despoiling themselves around Illyria’s prone and damaged form. Found Maria first, and Spike moved to scoop up what was left of her broken body, to carry her back to the Hyperion. Buffy didn’t want to look, but… to avoid looking would be to deny the woman her sacrifice, and God. She was a disaster. All of her spider-legs were broken off, save two, and one of those dangled by a thread. The rest of her was broken in basically every place that could be, bloodied and sagging, impaled on a spire of busted glass. “Fucking Christ…” Spike whispered as he moved to pry her… the body off.

And had his hand flung away by Jamal. “Get off of her. I’ve got it.”

Spike didn’t bother to get irate. He just stepped away as the grief-stricken werewolf, tears streaming down his dust-covered face and contusions looming like ripe plums under multiple portions of his visible anatomy, dragged the broken and lolling remains off of the building and cradled her in his arms. “No one else touches her.”

Spike just nodded. “Not arguin’, mate.”

That earned him a growl. “Not your ‘mate’. We had each other.” And the werewolf lowered his face into the lifeless neck, began to snuffle brokenly. “She followed you. Now she’s gone. Now she’s _gone_.”

The pain Spike must be feeling as he watched a fellow demon mourn his lost mate tore at Buffy, watching him in turn, but he didn’t speak. He merely turned away and stalked ahead in search of the rest. 

They didn’t find Cheeks, or Brenda. No Angel, thank god. But they did find Rinne. 

And George. And Lorne. The latter had been struck down by a flailing tentacle in the final seconds. The former had been flattened in the throes.

They couldn’t carry Betta George. He was spread over several feet of broken asphalt, and Buffy couldn’t even look at him, couldn’t even think about what had happened. Had to turn away. He had been so close, had had to be. And because of that, he had given it all up to the cause. 

Spike, though, knelt beside the squashed remains for quite some time, murmuring something. She didn’t have to know what to know what he was feeling. He had, after all, done the same himself, once. 

God knew she knew what it was like. 

When he was done, they went to Lorne. Spike wordlessly hefted the green demon’s body to his shoulder. “Can you get Rinne, Love?”

She could. She very much could. She carried her friend’s body all the way back in her arms, whispering all the way how sorry she was that she hadn’t been able to save her, for Gris.

***   
  
  
  
  
  
Where we go from here is anyone's guess...


	38. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm starting to get tired of saying it, but **another Major Character Death here.** Or maybe one and a half, depending on how you count characters who were in the comics and got pumped up into major OC status. Those ones are getting knocked off right and left as well, obviously.
> 
> I promise there will be a chapter in here where i actually don't say it, at least once, as we head to the end of this saga.
> 
> Oh. And I lifted a little dialogue from After The Fall for this chapter.

They stumbled wearily back to the Hyperion in twos and threes, joined along the way by the straggling remains of their small army. Nicole came trailing in after them carrying Brenda’s remains. Ms. Clean had Cheeks’ bloodied body. No one had seen Sylvestra in a very long time. Maybe she would come back later. 

Probably not, but there was always hope.

Angel was actually back there waiting when they arrived; a little bloodied, very dirty, mildly exhausted, but more or less undamaged. /How even?/ He held the doors open for them as they fell brokenly through… and with one sharp look, relieved Spike of Lorne’s body. “What the hell was _he_ doing there?”

“Got me,” Spike groaned, letting his burden fall to his grandsire, “but he turned the trick. Where the bloody hell did you get off to, then?”

“Doesn’t matter. Didn’t accomplish what I was trying to.” Angel’s eyes rose, dark and frustrated and pained. “And... I lost my dragon.” Regret swelled there for a moment, agonized and oddly remorseful. “Illyria... took her down. One swat. She... wasn’t even supposed to _be_ there.”

/Well, she loved you. Of course she was gonna follow you if she thought you were in danger./ The thought warred with the words, the urge Buffy felt to tell him she was sorry. In the end she couldn’t seem to lift even the rote ceremony to her lips. Everything just felt so _heavy_.

With a sigh that sounded as exhausted as she felt, Angel darted a concerned gaze behind them. “Betta George?” he asked. He sounded almost afraid to hear the answer.

Spike shook his head; a weary gesture of negation. 

“I’m sorry.” Angel took in the scattered remnants of their crew. Jamal had sequestered himself at the bottom of the stairs with Maria. The rest of their dead were being laid out in the lobby. “A lot of losses.” The words sounded as dead as the observation.

Buffy watched her ex numbly, feeling kind of outside of herself, the way she did sometimes after a battle. /Why weren’t you there, Angel? Helping us to cover, working with the rest of the class? What the hell were you _doing_ out there?/

“Yeah,” Spike was saying, heavily, but his eyes, too, were watching his grandsire with clear suspicion.

“Illyria?”

Spike didn’t answer, but Buffy could see by the tight clenching of her guy’s jaw that he felt that, too, was a failure laid at his door. “There wasn’t anything any of us could do. The whole bloody army was on her, at the end. We couldn’t fight them, too.” 

“No,” Angel answered quietly, “I suppose not…”

_“Angel!”_

The roar from outside the Hyperion doors shocked everyone into silence, and ended all discussion as to Illyria’s eventual fate. 

“You’ve messed up my plans real good. How ‘bout we just settle this once and for all, huh? Come on out and play!”

/_Gunn_./ 

So much for a breather. 

***  
  


They manned the doors for hours, their few remaining personnel stretched to the limits. Gunn seemed like he was everywhere outside; flitting from entrance to entrance, front to side-door to atrium to basement and back like a ghost, because of course he knew every way in and out of the place. He had them completely surrounded, was attacking at every opportunity to test their defenses, because it seemed like he'd been busy while they were out looking for him. Apparently he'd been out siring fledges right and left while they'd been running around putting out fires and rescuing captives and what-have-you. As far as they could calculate between them using Slayer-chills and vamp-scenting and all that, the jerk had rebuilt his whole dang army in the interim. 

Who knew how many baby vamps were outside their doors right now. Not that the children were much of a threat, really. These ones weren’t even Slayer-trained like the brood he'd had going over in that old hotel, and he probably hadn't had time to teach them the ropes either, he’d been so distracted with the whole Illyria Project. It was probably just bite-and-run and some kind of quick-and-dirty minion-bond, or they wouldn’t be here at all. But when it came to sheer force of numbers… /We might be in trouble./   
  
They had maybe half their remaining people in the Hyperion, for one thing, most of them wounded. Everybody was exhausted, and most of them were demoralized by the deaths of close comrades. On top of that, Gunn probably knew everything they could possibly do with the building to make it defensible.

Not to mention the guy was the hell of a combatant, if he managed to get past their perimeter. They could knock out fifty hapless fledges, sure, and lose maybe one or two of their remaining force doing it; but then they’d have to contend with this tempered warrior and whatever insane, magickal weapon he might have brought with him for the festivities. Just, no. /Who knew we were going to manage to take down something like Illyria, a full-fledged Old One in her primordial form, only to be held under siege and probably eventually overrun by one stupid vampire barely out of diapers, who just happens to have a lot of 411 from his pre-vamp years to use against us?/

It was kind of embarrassing, actually. 

Buffy knew Spike was possibly taking it harder even than she was, considering he’d worked with the guy for a year. He was over there pacing back and forth in front of the main entrance, smoking and glaring outside when he wasn’t standing still and twitching aside the curtains to look out, like some kind of pent-up jungle cat. Not that she didn’t get it. She felt pretty much the same way. Like making a sortie, even if it ended in death, just to end the stalemate.

/You’d think Angel’d be taking it the hardest, though/ she thought, eyes drawn to her ex. /I mean, considering their history./ But he seemed weirdly placid, all perched on the counter of the lobby with his hands between his knees like he was waiting for an appointment or something. He had the weirdest expression on his face, too. He looked almost… expectant, which was… bizarre. /Heck; everything about how you’re acting lately is bizarre. Don’t get me started on your weird-ass suicide run earlier. Just… what the hell, Angel?/

Connor was standing next to his father, speaking earnestly to him in low tones but gesticulating sharply, as if trying to convince him of something, but Angel merely shook his head and didn’t budge. Buffy had no idea what their conversation entailed, but apparently it wasn’t going well for the younger of the two. Finally the kid turned away from Angel with a frown and stalked toward her and Spike, expression disgusted and young features thunderous with disapproval. “What’s wrong?” she asked him as he approached.

“Oh, he’s just being Angel,” he answered grimly. “He’s just so… _conservative_, you know? He just wants to sit here and wait. I told him we should just get together and bust out the doors. All at once. All-out assault. Surprise the bastard. But he just wants to sit here. Kept saying it was his fight and he didn’t want to endanger anyone else; like we aren’t all gonna end up dying of thirst in here or something if we don’t make a stand sooner or later with that prick out there holding the doors.” He looked Spike up and down with a brief frown. “Present company excluded.”

Spike grunted dismissively. “I’m not gonna be snacking on anyone in here, Junior. Dumb move to weaken the allies, yeah?” He turned back to the windowed doors, fitfully twitched aside the drapes once more. “We go down, I sink with the bloody ship.”

Buffy exhaled heavily and pulled his hand from the heavy, embroidered silken valance before he could drag it from the rod with his endless fiddling. “I doubt we’ll be here that long, anyway. He’s gonna find a way in. He lived here or whatever, right?”

Connor shrugged distractedly and glanced back at his motionless father. “I guess so. Or at least he worked here. I don’t remember every detail, obviously.”

Spike’s hand fidgeted in her own. She squeezed it in solidarity. She too hated sitting still. As their young visitor wandered off to go vent somewhere else she tugged at her guy’s arm. “Hey. You wanna fight?”

Surprised, he turned to her. Blinked, then rolled his eyes briefly heavenward. “We’ve a battle coming, Buffy, and you wanna spar?”

“Keep you from jittering my arm off.” 

With a sigh he turned, found the nearest armchair, and flung himself into it, dragging her down with him by the waist. “I’ll do. Just… It hurts, yeah? Worked with the lad. Don’t want to have to stake him. He’s turned into a right sod of a vamp, though, innit?” Regret filled his voice, and his face twisted a little. “Not that most don’t, but I’d’ve thought, since so much of him was left…”

Buffy reached out to cup his cheek. “That’s the problem. He’s still trying to do the right thing, but the demon’s got him all twisted up, so he’s doing it the wrong way. It’s pretty common, from what I remember…” And she smiled into his eyes with, she hoped, just the right mix of teasing and gentle to jolly him out of his dark funk. “Trying so hard to do the right thing, but ending up doing it the wrong way, and making a colossal mess out of it?”

That earned her a narrow-eyed glare. “Look, you minx; that was an entirely other situation…”

Buffy grinned and did her best to lower her voice into a terrible approximation of Spike’s accent. “‘Right. I’m just gonna grab that Slayer, chain her up to a catacomb wall across from my ex, wield a cattle prod, confess my undying love…’”

“Bloody alright, but to be fair, it sounded sodding romantic as hell in my vamp-brain. And for the love of all that’s unholy, Buffy, please don’t ever try to sound like me again, because it’s an affront to all things English.”

“Is it going to drive you ‘directly off your trolley’?” she asked sweetly.

He sat up straight, leaned in, and glared at her nose-to-nose. “I mean it. You keep on, pet, and I’ll have to do something drastic.”

“Oh yeah?” She grinned the wider, challenging him. “What does that involve? And how much time will it take up? Because I think we’ve got it.”

He pulled back at that and eyed her with interest, then sighed and flung out an arm. “I see. Just tryin’ to distract me, is it? Calm the anxious vamp?”

“Is it working?”

He groaned. “You’re a sodding menace, you.”

“I just know how you feel.” 

Her quiet, understanding tones caught his attention, brought his eyes back to her face. “Yeah,” he agreed, and his fingers found her cheek in turn. “Buffy,” he whispered then, and his gaze intensified on hers. “With everything goin’ to pot here, I just wanted you to know… I never wanted you in this, because it wasn’t your fight, yeah? But I’m so _bloody_ grateful that you came. That you’re here with me. Aren’t words for how I’ve felt to have this time with you. And if…”

“No,” she told him, shaking her head, because this was a conversation she would not accept. “I’m not going to let it happen that way. I’ve already _been_ there, alright? _Both_ of us or neither of us, either way. That’s _why_ I came.”

He closed his eyes and turned his face away. Every tiny line around his eyes pinched up. “Buffy…”

_“No,”_ she repeated, low and determined. “No jumping in front of me, no last-minute anything. General Buffy had to believe in the concept of acceptable losses. Spike’s partner Buffy does not.”

He was not only clearly startled, but by his expression, deeply touched. “Does that mean you're not General Buffy anymore?”

/Where’ve _you_ been?/ “Maybe it does. When you're not able to accept that belief anymore, then that means that you're not able to lead the same way. And… okay.” Working through things as she went was always tough, but he was always able to follow her, so it was worth a shot. “I’ve been… co-leading, here, because I’m your partner first. And when any one person is more important than the mission—even yourself, your own happiness—then that means you can’t really be the One, the General, the Leader anymore. That... person who asks people to die for you.” She still felt haunted by the sight of Gris, guttering out slowly. Of Rinne, holding her hand, and crying like the world was coming to an end. Of Groo… /God, Groo./ And now Brenda and Cheeks, Rinne and Maria, George and Lorne. Broken, crushed. Lifeless.

She had led them. Her last soldiers, if alongside Spike. And yet… /I know I’m not willing to give you up. Not for anything. Which means if I’m asking them to do what I can’t…/

She used to have to. Have to be willing to sacrifice anything, or she couldn’t ask anyone else to give up everything. But that had broken with Dawn. /It changed the first time, when I refused to give up my sister for the world. I gave up myself, instead. And now... Now, after losing you, living without you.../  
  
She hadn't been given the choice, that last time. And it had taught her one very pointed lesson. /I just really don’t think I can do it anymore. Not when we’ve had… this./

She could feel his eyes on her. “You've earned havin’ happiness, Buffy,” he told her quietly.

She lifted her eyes to meet his. “Well then, I guess that means I resign my commission. Since I never really asked for it anyway.”

His gaze on hers was penetrating, and kind of amazed. “Oh, don’t look so shocked, okay, dammit? I _know_ you, so I know you feel the same way, alright? Are you gonna tell me that if I’m the one who doesn’t make it you’d just go on, like you did last time?”

His response was immediate. His eyes snapped back to hers, ablaze and broken. “Only reason I could was because the Niblet needed me. Here…”

Because he needed a _reason_, and she had always been it. Once he’d given up on living for the thrill, she had been his All. Without that, without her… /Yeah, you still believe in the good fight. You got that much out of this./ But after all they’d shared it would be even more impossible to just accept loss and move on. /Especially now that I’m also your _mate_. So if you had the excuse that it was in the name of the good fight…/ “Here, you’d go right out and find a nice rumble to, what is it? ‘Do you in quick’. It was what you were trying to do anyway, before I came back to LA.”

Her knowing comment made the air whoosh out of his dead lungs as if she’d gut-punched him, and he nodded reluctantly. Didn’t inhale for a long moment, only doing so finally in order to answer. “You’re not supposed to pay so much bloody attention to me. You know that, Slayer?”

She felt her lips twitch grimly. “Spike. You were kind of obvious. I mean, for God’s sake, you didn’t even have any _records_. There wasn’t a _TV.”_

“Had a bitty one, for a while. It broke right before you came by.”

She rolled her eyes at him, and he hunched up defensively. “Had other entertainments, dammit, Buffy.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” He thrust his chin out pugnaciously, a fire kindling in his eyes. “Nice film behind my eyelids, could turn on any time I wanted. The cinema of memories. Lot bloody better than anything I could find on telly, for a lonely bloke, even if it was a bit bittersweet.”

“Oh.” Closing her own eyes, she sighed and settled back against his chest, picturing him alone in that godawful apartment; just him and his hand. Thinking of her, reliving all the good and the bad of them, over and over again. Just like she had done in Rome and everywhere else, while the loss swamped him and… “You do know that even if we get out of here you’re never going back there, right?”

He smiled against her neck, nuzzled a little in that way that always made every tiny hair on her body stand up and take notice. “Got to, pet. Got to fetch my duster.”

/Oh. Right. We definitely need that./ She snugged her face into his neck in turn. “Well, then, before we leave we’re gonna make a few new memories in there,” she breathed.

He pulled back, away from the drifting fringes of her escaping hair. “Oh, yeah?”

She met his eyes firmly. “Yeah.”

A slow, wicked smile spread across his lips. “S’pose we best win this battle, then, innit, and get to it?”

“Definitely.” 

He caught the back of her neck and yanked her down to his mouth. She let herself sink into the kiss for a moment, eyes closed, and fought to forget the circumstances, the sounds of anxiety and pain around them; everything but the struggle to be one with him in that moment. This was the peace they had fought for, the peace they had _earned_, and dammit, she would take it every chance she got! 

“You know what this means,” he murmured against her mouth after some indeterminate period.

“Mmm?” God, she loved kissing him. She had never spent enough time on that the first time around. Stupid quick and dirty goals. She had really, really cheated herself out of some fantastically good making-out time, like an idiot. He was almost as good at kissing as he was at…

Well, honestly, how a guy kissed was just an advertisement for other things. And when it came to ads, Spike was really just a billboard for his _features_ in that department, and probably she should encourage more kissing. On the regular.

“It means…” He caught her chin, forcing her to cease her determined assault on his mouth for a short moment. “…No jumpin’ in front of me either. If you’re gonna be showing me a good time in my flat later, it means no dyin’ again, yeah?”

“Well, obviously!” He’d interrupted kissing for _that?_

She went back in. And pouted when he pulled away. “I mean it, Buffy. If I don’t get to die for you, then same goes the other way ‘round. And no tellin’ me to go on without you, either.”

The pronouncement earned him a tolerant look. “You think I’m gonna tell you to, whatsitcalled? Carry a torch in my name or something? You’d just get all upset and erupt at me again, and I’m trying to calm you down.”

He tapped his tongue at her, looking delighted, like he usually did when she said something that amused him. “You’re mixing metaphors, Love.”

“I am?” /Huh./ She thought it had sounded right.

“Yeah. It’s adorable.” His hand slid into her hair, loosening her ponytail, which, okay, there so wasn’t time for the kind of fun that ensued when her hair was down, whatever she’d said before. 

Batting his quick fingers away, she made an impatient face at him as she lifted them to re-tighten her coiffure. “Spike, I’m not adorable. I’m covered in building dust and blood and probably demon-gore, and _definitely_ sweat, and…”

“And you’re fucking gorgeous. And adorable.”

She dropped her hands to his chest to regard him with certainty. “You’re insane. Vampires are twisted.”

He showed her the ‘duh-face’ as he threaded the fingers of his right hand with hers against his sternum. “Well, _yeah_. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the truth.” His expression sobered, and as if drawn by a magnet his left hand rose again, fingertips trailing over her cheek. “My wildcat, my Slayer. Been through so much here, and yet look at you.” His eyes glowed at her. “And you came because of me. _Me_.”

She caught his gaze, sanguine. “And I’d do it again, you dope. I’ve loved every minute of this. I wouldn’t take back a day.” She flashed him a saucy smile. “Or a night.”

A low, purry growl rumbled in his chest, and she could swear she felt every bite scar on her body tingle as his hands dropped to bracket her, tightened on her waist. 

A bang on the door exploded into their senses, and her heart nearly leaped from her chest in reaction. She was practically thrown from Spike’s lap to her feet, axe tossed to her as she skidded back to the door a foot or so away. He was already there at vamp-speed, sword in hand and at the ready. 

The front entrance was being tested again. End of interlude.

/Well… at least a protracted siege gives you time for a little closure/ Buffy thought grimly as she set herself to dust a few baby vamps, /even if it doesn’t help from the supplies department./ And, as the first mindless fledge broke through their perimeter, she found herself smiling for another reason. 

The fledge’s head hit the floor and burst into dust. Her body swiftly followed. Another interloper followed her into oblivion, from Spike’s side. 

The floor of the lobby very quickly became ashy and treacherous. But at least now the defenders had something to do besides wait.

***

**S:  
**  
A sodding ‘day’s worth of being besieged and skirmishing off and on with Charlie-boy’s rotten little minions, and Spike was bored stiff. The tosser could have at least trained the prats a bit, couldn’t he have? The plonkers didn’t even provide any sport to alleviate the tedium. Hell, if this was going to be the _pièce de résistance_—and it was shaping up to be something of a last stand, considering their numbers and the general morale in the sodding hotel—then it was a bit of an anticlimax after the whole massive Illyria business. /This all you can manage?/ he thought in the general direction of the invisible Senior Partners. /A wet vamp with an inferiority complex and a grudge against my impotent git of a grandsire? You’ve already removed the prick’s fangs, so why all the ceremony?/ Not that he wanted to tempt fate by taunting these hellgod sorts, even in his own mind, but it all seemed rather foolish in comparison to encouraging a being the likes of Illyria to go off her nut.

Though, now that he thought of it, that business had apparently been outside Their schemes a bit. They hadn’t half liked Illyria-Primordial running about crushing Their dimension. Maybe this low-grade war with Gunn was more Their speed. 

The Senior Partners were cowardly gits, Spike decided. Couldn’t win a battle where They outnumbered Their enemy about a hundred to one? Send everyone off to a privately-owned dimension where the PTBs couldn’t look in, make the odds even more uneven. That didn’t work out in Their favor? Turn Their main enemy human and the human one into a vamp and set ‘em against one another. That vamp misunderstands his visions and activates an Old One, she starts wreaking hell in their dimension? Hit the reset button on everything and have a tantrum about it. Accidentally brought a Slayer along so as it turned the tide a bit? “Don’t like havin’ another bloody PTB rep here, do you?” he muttered at no one in particular. “One they’ve tapped lifelong, whose abilities you can’t rip out of her so easy like you did with Peaches.” He found himself flipping his useless Zippo open and closed in irritation. “Well, let’s just bloody kill everyone, then, yeah? Your own armies, the vamps, whoever comes along.” He snorted at nothing, and wished for more butane. He was damned sick of using matches. “Wankers.”

Something rumbled outside, and the building shook a bit. Out of nowhere, Wes popped into existence, right the hell in front of Spike’s bloody face. “Spike; what in the name of God have you done?”

Spike blinked, taken aback. “What the sodding hell do you mean? Go back to ghostin’ about, yeah? I’ve a door to watch.”

The specter ignored him, clearly distraught for some reason. “Where is Buffy?” 

“Loo. Back in a mo’, why…”

The wraith glared at him as if he had committed some kind of incalculable crime. “You had to tempt fate. You insufferable fool. You have just made your Slayer the Senior Partners’ most direct target.”

Something cold ran down Spike's spine; frigid and icy, and settled into his belly. “How the bloody hell did I do that? Surely They knew that…”

The poncy face of the ghost was tight and fierce behind the glittering specs. “I’ve tried to stay away from her so They couldn’t sense her through me. But how you’ve addressed Them directly; drawn their attention to what They’ve missed. You made it a challenge; thought of the one thing They had not considered. Now They see the one thread that has been pulling the warp of Their designs out of line, here. Not you. Not I. Not Connor nor Angel nor anyone else in this dimension. Buffy. It is her presence here that has altered the very fabric of Their plans from the beginning.” 

Spike stopped breathing. /Oh, Christ. Because she wasn’t meant to be here. Because she only came at the last minute, on the turn of a bloody dime… for me./

“Here, with her demon-side in a meditative state, she is a conduit to the Powers in a way that no one else _can_ be. Everything she does is a direct, instinctive line to their instruction." Oxford's voice tightened with something near naked ire, mixed with a fair jag of fear. "You have no _idea_ all that she has altered just by her very presence in this dimension.” 

Spike’s hands started to shake, in time, almost, to the terrible, menacing rumbling outside. He could hear a redoubled shouting from without; a resounding, building cry of massing armies; the screams of vampires, of unhinged demons…

“Buffy has caused Angel to act more decisively, and she has twice used her blood to heal him more swiftly than anyone thought possible so that he might work with greater speed. She has caused him to face his responsibilities here with greater dispatch, and to work in a more cooperative fashion; as a member of a group rather than as an isolated loner or a sole figurehead…”

/Oh, bloody hell./ If there was one thing those Senior Partners hated, it was anyone screwing with their plans for Golden Boy Angel…

“And it is Buffy who has helped _you_ to be a more coordinated leader, by keeping you emotionally integrated while you struggled for balance between your two disparate duties; the needs of the humans here, and Illyria…”

Christ knew that was true. Oh, hell.

“…Buffy who has helped you to find your way between your physical needs and the demon politics of the dimension. She has made you physically stronger, and made you _appear_ stronger in the eyes of your fellow demon-lords, so that in the end you became the ultimate demon-lord of Los Angeles rather than just one of many…”

/Bloody fuck./

“…And more swiftly by far than you would have done otherwise. Without her presence here you and Illyria would have held but one territory, and time would have dragged on for months, years even, in a useful stalemate which served Their ends. They would have held this city and its denizens to Their own devices for all that time. And,” the ghost went on grimly, “it is because of Buffy’s presence here as a Champion that so many of the human survivors were rescued and funneled to Lorne. Without her, most of them would still be chattel, or dead, and the final war would not yet have occurred.” Wesley sounded far more bleak than Spike had ever heard him, the hammer blows of his words like a knell of doom. “The timetable has been accelerated to a vast degree by her presence. All of these things have occurred with such haste that the Senior Partners could not account for it, could not figure out who was the nexus figure in all this… until you just now brought it to Their attention.”

Spike closed his eyes, terror arcing through him. “I just made her public enemy number one, didn’t I?”

Wesley never got the chance to answer. He didn’t really need to. The mix of vamps and assorted spider-demons crashing through the glass of the ceiling answered for him.

***

The fight was a bloody long one. It just didn’t end, the relentless waves of demons, driven to a frothing rage by their hellgod masters, and Gunn’s minions attacking in turns and more or less from every side made it the hell of a thing just to stay alive. 

At some point it became a struggle to hold them off from coming in at every entry-point, since one needed every available combatant at the center of the building to melee, which left few sentries for guard-duty. Six of one and half-dozen of the other at this point, since their defenses had already been breached. 

The breaking point came along about dimensional sunset, when all of Charlie-boy’s vamps had been dusted, most of the spider-sorts had been done away with, Buffy had taken on four great sodding hairy bastards all on her own and had a massive slice down one arm which badly needed stitching. Angel was seeing to it, damn his soul, while Spike and the cub tussled with some bastard of a dinosaur-looking fucking thing that seemed determined to eat her while she was unable to swing her goddamned axe, sod it all.

In the end Spike was left to hold the fucking thing off at sword-point while, of all things, that shit Connor actually leaped on the thing’s back with that cutlass of his and, no fear, hacked at its christing neck till he got its spinal cord from behind. The goddamned thing couldn’t shake him off with those puny arms it had while he was up there, and hell. Spike was going to have to give the lad a pat on the back for that one. 

“Well done, Junior,” he managed as Angel’s get disembarked from the falling monster, and laid a hand warmly on the teen’s shoulder. “Hell of a job.”

“Yeah, well,” Connor answered, but he actually glowed, and did the little git actually care all that much for his opinion?”

“Yeah, well done. Who’d’ve thought? Little baby Connor. You used to have a dinosaur stuffie, and now look at you.”

Spike spun in concert with the lad at Gunn’s voice. Angel and Buffy were on their feet too. Charlie-boy had arrived, was swinging in from some upstairs area to leap down from the railings above. He alighted on the floor before them, landing lightly on a small pile of bodies, and glanced around him in distaste. “You guys really did a number on the Hyperion. Should call a maid service. Man. This place is a mess.”

“Who made it a mess, Gunn?” Peaches’ voice was grim as he pushed away from Buffy to step between Spike and his son. “You brought the party.”

“Oh, not just me. These other guys came to get at your girl. Don’t know what their problem is. I kept having visions of killing her too, but I’m not here for that. Don’t care.” He stretched out his arm, holding a very long sword with a golden pommel, hilt-first, in Angel’s direction. “I’m here for _you_.”

Granddad nodded, accepting this smoothly. “Sounds good. Let’s step aside.”

Connor shifted in front of his father. “Like hell.”

Peaches didn’t seem to think much of his son’s unaccountable bravery. “Connor, get out of the way!”

Christ, if there was one thing Spike hated, it was family drama. “Hate to break it to you right now, Peaches, but the kid probably has a better chance against Charlie-boy than you do. Last time you tried to fight him he took you like you were made of tissue; and you had spells on you then.”

“Stay out of this, _Spike_.”

“I don’t want him,” Gunn agreed. “Get out of the way, kid. My fight’s with your old man.”

Buffy, of course, had to get involved. She pushed to the fore as well, bleeding all over the place, smelling delectable and turning Spike’s stomach inside out with fear for her. “You’ll have to go through me first.”

Gunn’s face split into a wide, anticipatory grin. “Sounds like fun, Slayer-girl.” His eyes heated to something familiar; predatory and hungry. “Anyone ever tell you you smell just…” He closed his eyes and inhaled, nostrils flaring in a leering, almost sexual anticipation. “Mmmm. _God_, girl. No _wonder_ you managed to keep these two strung along for years.” His eyes were no longer dark when they opened, but amber, because he, of course, had vamped. They flickered to her neck and the multitude of scars there that attested to the many ways in which she had been sampled. “Tell me; you just givin’ it out for free, or does a vamp have to fight you for the privilege of a taste?”

Spike lost it then. He had zero memory of moving. He did not remember snarling, did not remember leaping; had no recollection of growling or swinging or fighting; nothing. 

He actually remembered nothing at all until he was on his back on the ground with Buffy on top of him, screaming at him, his face throbbing familiarly from the aftereffects of a Slayer-punch, his right arm bleeding. He blinked his eyes to refocus them, trying to figure out what was happening. Saw Gunn, seeping from three or four decent wounds—/Ha, then!/—as Buffy swung away from him to rejoin what looked like the hell of a melee. Connor was grappling with the asshole alone, and now Peaches was wading in, and he needed to get up and rejoin the fight. But he needed to focus first, needed to think, needed to stop letting that fucker get under his skin, because that was what the bastard had done. He’d smelled the mate-bond, and he’d used it to turn Spike’s mind off. Divide-and-conquer. 

/You’ve been had, Spike./ 

The fucking prick might not have had any home-training, but he was instinctive as hell.

“Connor, get out of the way, this is my fight!” Angel was bellowing as he struggled to elbow his son out of the way.

“Not a chance, Angel! You can’t fight this guy alone!” 

“I _said_…” 

“Anyone every tell you you should listen to your pops, son?” Tangled together, neither father nor son could get a swing in edgewise until it was too late.   
  
Spike, rising from the floor, saw the blow coming, could do nothing. Buffy, too, was trapped behind the struggling duo and was thus out of range to do anything but watch in sickened horror as Gunn’s blade drove home.

Straight through Connor’s solar plexus. 

Spike surged to his feet. /Oh, Christ…/

Connor had turned a sickening puce color, curling around the blade. “You got to learn to mind your elders, boy.” And Gunn kicked him off the sword. 

_“CONNOR!”_

Charlie-boy stepped back then, gave Angel a nod. “I’ll give you a minute. Then you and I are gonna throw down.”

Angel fell to his knees, catching his son as he slumped to the floor. “Oh God… Connor, _no_…” He was losing it, tears streaming down his face, and Christ, Spike did not want to watch this. For one, tough talk or no, he’d liked the boy well enough… and for another. All his mixed emotions about his grandsire aside, if he’d somehow managed to have a child… 

Fuck. 

Spike turned aside, kept his eyes warily on Gunn. If the fucker so much as moved...   
  
Hell; maybe he should just do the bastard now. Course, that would interfere. Those two deserved a bit of a moment. 

Buffy, he noticed, was doing the same. Watching Gunn, axe held at the ready; though she also had one eye on Angel, her expression agonized on his behalf and a tear already falling. /Bloody fuck. Focus on Charlie-boy. Keep him in sight./

He could still hear them, of course, whatever he did. Hear the boy’s voice gasping through the rising blood, the bubbles popping in his mouth, his throat… Christ. 

“No, no, no, Connor, you _can’t_ go, you can’t _do_ this to me! You’re my reason for living!”

_“Dad_…”

“You _have_ to stay! You’ve saved me so many times, Connor. Even before everything went to hell. You have no _idea_ what you mean to me. So, you see; you _have_ to stay.” 

_“Dad_… Listen. I know… you said… as long as I… was safe… that you were gonna… win this thing. Well… I need you… to promise me something.”

“Connor… Don’t…”

“And you gotta… do it, because it’s, like… a last request.”  
  
_“Please._ _Don’t_ say that…”

“No matter what… happens, Ang… Dad. Even though they… got me… Don’t… let them win. You’re… a good man. Vampire or not… you’re a good man.” 

The rattle had started. And Spike could hear his grandsire sobbing, and fuck, he very bloody much did not want to be here for this.

Buffy’s eyes locked on his, regret passing between them. And then her gaze flickered to Gunn. He knew what she was saying. She agreed. The second Connor breathed his last they would have him. He was dust.

Connor wasn’t talking anymore. The gasping went on, and now the thrashing had started as his body choked and struggled for oxygen; and Angel was sobbing it in for him, and fuck, this part always took forever. Why couldn’t the kid just dust away quickly and decently and have done with it? He was the child of two vampires, dammitall; daywalker or no, this drawn out sodding thing was torture for all concerned.

When it was finally over, Angel’s sobs cut off as if they’d been set to a tap. He rose, approached to where Spike and Buffy had been about to dispatch everyone’s least favorite vamp. “No,” he growled, low in his throat, and he was holding Connor’s sword. “Back off. He’s mine.”

“Yeah; _now_ it’s a party.”

Buffy threw Spike a brief, worried look, axe still held to Gunn’s unprotesting throat. “Angel, I… I know how… I mean, if it was Dawn, God knows I’d be… But you’re…”

“Leave off, Buffy,” Spike told her softly. “If I had a child…” He shook his head grimly and dropped his sword. “Let him. It’s his to do.”

The look she shot him then was filled with stunned uncertainty. He wasn’t entirely sure if it was for her ex’s chances, or for his sentiment, but either way she nodded finally and stepped back as he did, taking up a station to one side like a referee for a penalty kick. Spike did the same. 

And they watched while his grandsire, stalking forward like death incarnate, became, somehow, the embodiment of Angelus without even the demon to drive him. And, human or no, utterly took Charles Gunn apart. 

It was, Spike had to admit, rather glorious to see the old man in action once more. He couldn’t exactly say he had missed it, but… Well. Alright. He _had_ missed it, a bit. This vicious, calculated, razor-edged and methodical ferocity, stalking and demented and utterly deadly was a thing of beauty in its own unique way; in a manner that had once complemented his own impulsive, frenzied, and vividly cheerful insanity. 

He rather thought Buffy was a bit horrified to see it, though. He knew, of course, that this was all still there; a part of Angel even sans Angelus, if buried deeply. He rather thought, though, that his beloved had still thought them two entirely separate beings before tonight, and Angel a sweet, toothless puppy without his demon. /Not so much, Love. He just hides it well. The soul’s affected by the demon just as much as the demon’s affected by the soul. All the bloody thing did was make him feel really bleedin’ bad about wantin’ to do all the things he’s never stopped wantin’, is all. But he still wants ‘em. Every bloody day, he wants ‘em; Liam as much as the demon ever did./

Of course, without the demon there to egg him on Angel did have those nasty pangs of conscience; even with the death of his son writ large across his mind. And, having done as a human what none of them could do before now, and with Charles Gunn lying beaten beneath him, a sorry excuse for a vamp at the feet of one of the greatest who had ever been—/And yes, he’ll always be that, vamp anymore or no, soul or no, and don’t you forget it, you sod!/—and the sword was raised to strike off the bastard’s head… Angel relented.

/Christ, just _do_ it, damn it! Don’t be so bloody moral! The git’ll just get back up and cause us more trouble!/ It was a wonder he’d beaten the tosser at all. Grief and rage had lent him the strength of armies, but…

“He’s still got a part to play,” Angel grated to no one in particular, chest heaving, then turned… and went for the nearest door to wrench it open. 

Ms. Clean and Tina had been stationed there for the last hour, fighting to keep out about seven Tarugh’ald. Angel took out all seven in under a minute, then swept around for the next door, clearly spoiling for a fight.

“Is he just going to kill all the rest of the demons in the whole dimension?” Buffy asked quietly.

Spike shrugged and kept his sword held carefully at Gunn’s bleeding throat. “Let him get it out of his system. If he does for the whole bleedin’ army, saves us the soddin’ trouble, yeah?”

“Yeah, I guess if it was Dawn I’d pretty much kill everything too.”

Spike grunted, unable to look at her. “Prefer it if you didn’t talk about such things, pet. Makes me a mite angry just considerin’ it.”

The grief-fed rampage went on for quite some time. Oddly, the fighters the old man went against seemed to fumble their weapons or to attack so clumsily as to appear incredibly inept. Maybe they were too shocked by the sheer, balls-out ferocity of the rampage to react well. When there were no more victims in the hotel Angel sought more demons on whom to vent his rage outside, and the slaughter continued unabated. “I’ve never seen him like this,” Buffy whispered worriedly at one point.

Spike choked back a grim laugh. “You have,” he answered. “You just don’t like to think of him as the same bloke.”

That observation earned him a stare and some extremely profound silence from the woman who shared a bond with him. Perhaps best to change the subject. “Got to give credit. He’s doing well, in all. Expected him to be at least a bit injured by now, no matter how brassed off he is.”

Below their feet, a low, grating chuckle sounded from the vamp they held at weapons-point. “Oh… those guys won’t kill him. They’re not _allowed_.”

Buffy reacted first, jabbing the point of her axe harder into the oozing throat. “Care to repeat that?”

The injured vamp coughed out a sardonic laugh. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it was for me to try to go after him. Damn visions…” Gunn seemed to find something inordinately funny. “Partners… Bastards really want him alive. Not my problem. You see before you... the only fool in this city who will kill him for you... free of charge.” And he spread his hands a little on the floor. “Makes me the good guy, right? Doin’ what the... Powers want, if it’s what the Partners don’t.”

Spike frowned, parsing through that. It didn’t make a lick of sense. And yet… he could see where the git got his logic from. “Just shut up, Charlie-boy. You’re delusional. What the hell could the Powers possibly have to gain by seein’ Peaches go tits-up?”

Another laugh. “Dunno. But it’s gotta be better than the other guys... get by keepin’ him around, don’tcha think?”

“I don’t _get_ you!” Buffy interrupted, horrified. “You worked with him for _five_ years! He was there for you, you were there for him, you fought at each other’s sides, and now you want to _kill_ him?”

Dark eyes rolled away from Spike to close with Buffy’s. “Girl, you don’t get us. Me and Angel… we always did what was best for the Team. Best for the mission. Even if that meant... killin’ one of us. And from the start he always said... if I needed to stake his ass, I should… if it was best for the mission.”

“Seems like that goes the other way now, Charlie-boy,” Spike pointed out grimly.

Gunn sputtered a laugh. “Says you. Not sure why. You were never such a... big fan of the guy either. Why you’re takin’ his part now I’ll never know.”

“Because he doesn’t know the full story.”

Angel was back, chest heaving, covered with blood and gore, face spattered, clothing torn. He nodded at each of them. “Alright, let him up.” 

Spike exchanged a quick glance with Buffy, saw that she was equally dumbfounded. “What the bloody hell for?”

Angel’s hand cut away from himself in a sharp, impatient gesture Spike knew all too well. “Just. Do it, alright?”

He didn’t have the mojo. Not anymore. Not without the blood. But somehow… Spike felt it anyway. Felt the power of those dark eyes; like a sire command. 

His sword lowered. He stepped back. /Fuck; fuck you, Angel. You still have too much bloody power over me./

Gunn, still lying on the ground, had begun to grin.

Buffy was staring from Spike to Angel as if they had both lost their minds. “What…”

“Buffy. Please.”

He no longer had a blood-bond with her, either, but he had something; just as he did with Spike. Some power in his eyes, some ability to coerce or manipulate, and Buffy, confused and rattled, gave way. She, too, stepped back, took the whole thing on faith that the prat knew what the bloody hell he was doing.

And then Angel had his hand held out. Was helping Gunn up, of all sodding things. Was giving him a nod. “You ready to finish this?”

And Gunn was dusting his hands off and looking around him for his sword. “Hell yes.”

_“What?”_ Buffy demanded, incredulous.

Spike felt cloudy, like his mind had gone soft. This all seemed so strangely preordained, and he just… couldn’t…

“Alright, then.” Angel had his hands spread wide, was looking on Gunn with the oddest expression on his face; an almost expectant one. Weary and… greedy.

“Angel, I know you just lost your son, and I’m _so_ sorry, but this isn’t the _way!”_

Buffy was crying now, and Spike wanted to chime in, because the whole thing was ludicrous. Wanted to step forward, interpose himself… And yet he could swear he could feel the two sides of himself struggling, in this moment, utterly, at odds with one another. The feral part, the demon, fought to dive in, to attack the one who was threatening a member of his family; recognizable if truncated somehow, un-sensed, un-scented. To turn to dust an interloper who had had designs on his mate. And yet… something in the bond between self and mate held him back, held him still while the souled part of him struggled with it, wholly confused and uncertain what to do. A hundred-plus years’ familiarity with violence and action had not convinced the human part of him that these things should always be the first order of business, so if the demon was undecided…

Stymied, he remained frozen. And, oddly, it seemed that Buffy was too, or at least she had yet to move. “I can’t believe you’re _doing_ this, Angel!”

Angel shook his head, not looking at her. “I’m sorry. I know, you don’t understand. But I have to do this.” And his eyes went back to Charlie-boy. “What are you waiting for, a parade? Do it!”

Gunn bared his teeth. “Damn you!” he hissed, and lifted the sword. 

It would be a decapitating blow. But some uncertainty seemed to be in it, and Charlie-boy hesitated… and, /Christ, why can’t I _move?_/

“What’s your problem, Charles? You’ve been wanting to do this since we got here!”

“Shut up, Angel!” Buffy cried out. “You still have something to live for!” Some horrible, pained hesitation touched green eyes then. “I know… that I said…”

Spike’s heart fell to his feet. /Oh, Christ, Buffy, _no_./

But she didn’t say the thing he feared. Not even to save the ponce’s life. “And I know… with Connor…” She bit her lip. “But there’s still so much…”

Peaches just shook his head grimly. “It’s not what you think, Buffy. But it’s time.” His eyes never left Gunn’s. “Isn’t it.”

Gunn’s hand’s shook. So did his sword. “It damn well is, but…” And suddenly hot, amber eyes were glaring at Buffy. “What I want to know is, why all the sudden, when the damn visions have been screaming at me for the last couple of hours to kill _you_, girl, and leave Angel be, now they want me to leave _you_ alone?” He watched her for a second with frightening intelligence, shook his head. “That concerns me, you know? See, anything the Partners want, I don’t want. So I think that means I need to kill you both.”

Something started roaring inside Spike; but distantly, impotently, as he struggled to free his synapses. But he still couldn’t move. Couldn’t twitch, as the war between his selves raged on. 

Gunn was no longer having any trouble moving, however. The sword swung down… this time at Buffy. 

But then, out of nowhere, she too was moving again; in a swift parry, to block the blow with her axe. “You know, the weird thing is, I couldn’t move for anything when you were going after Angel. I felt bizarre. Weakened; like something wanted me to just stand there and let you kill him. It drove me nuts. But if you’re gonna come after me, it’s game on.” And she swung around again, a move that Spike had seen dozens of times. An offensive move, one designed to make a man jump back, swing wide in turn, leave himself open. Except… weirdly, at the last minute she pulled it, turned it into a block, and just what the fuck was she doing? Was she trying to give the prat the upper hand?

“Buffy,” Angel interrupted anxiously, “please. Just stay out of this. Just… let it happen. You don’t know…”

Buffy ignored him and went on fighting… but in the most retiring way Spike had ever seen from her. It was like she was play-fighting with a human she had sworn not to damage in any way. She never came near touching Gunn, never took the slightest advantage… And Christ; Gunn was fighting the same way; leaving dozens of openings, fighting almost entirely defensively… There was not a point one to this combat, and after a moment both seemed to come to an awareness of it, for they stepped back at about the same instant to eye one another, breathing a little heavily. 

“This is… dumb,” Buffy opined, frowning. “You’re fighting like crap.”

“Same to you, girl. I thought you were supposed to be tough. I’m kind of let down.”

Buffy lifted her chin in his direction, throwing him a pointed look. “Hey, I don’t see you going all vampy. What’s the deal? It’s like you aren’t even trying.”

She had a point. Charlie-boy’s game face had gone, in there somewhere. Hell, judging by the way the sod’s hand shot up to his face to feel about, he hadn’t even noticed. What the fuck… 

“Look who’s talking.”

Buffy straightened, and though she didn’t quite shoot Spike a look, he could read the uncertainty in every line of her body. “Something’s affecting me.”

Frowning, Spike felt along their bond. Flared his nostrils, sniffing. And… /Fuck./ The part of her that normally felt awake, vibrant, alive during a fight was damn near quiescent right now. 

Her demon-side was asleep, or at least in some kind of deep goddamned meditation. On the line with someone… or else it had been shot with a tranquilizer. And apparently the same fucking thing had been done to Charlie-boy, if he wasn’t vamped up in a fight with a Slayer. Put up against what was happening to yours truly, and it was starting to make a bit of sense. “I think I get it.”

They were the first words Spike had managed to speak in quite some time, and as such they drew the attention of all interested parties. He meant to hold that attention while he had it. “The Powers and the Partners have chosen Their Champions, yeah? Buffy… you’ve got a conduit to the Powers here that can’t be turned off like a tap, ‘cause you’re a direct line. It’s in you, it’s a part of you. You’re installed, and you’re here like a bug in the Partners’ system. So They’ve been using you; to speed things up, to work all of us so that things have gone more smoothly for our side, and to bung things up for the bastards.” Buffy gaped at him. So did Peaches and Charlie. “And now the Partners are right brassed. They meant to do you in, Love, down to even usin’ Gunn here to manage it ‘cause he’s all They’ve got left to try to save Their little playground and Their mighty buggering plan.” 

Gunn frowned at that, looking mildly offended. Buffy just looked scared. “But the goals have changed, yeah? For whatever sodding reason, the Partners don’t want Peaches to die… so as long as you’re willin’ to protect him from their boy and his whole vindictive crush, They’re gonna join in with the Powers to protect you… because They want you to protect Peaches.” His eyes flickered to Gunn. “And the Powers want your arse out of the way, Charlie-boy, if you’re gonna kill the Slayer…” He frowned, working through it. It seemed bloody illogical, but however he looked at it, he kept coming to the same sodding conclusion. “But…” 

“If I’m gonna kill Angel, They want her to let me, because it’s gonna fix this! I’m tellin’ you! If the Partners don’t want it, the Powers do! It’s that simple! So just let me _do_ it, and this’ll all be over!”

“You’re crazy!” Buffy burst out, horrified. “What kind of logic _is_ that, even!”

“He’s right.” Angel’s quiet voice was all the interruption needed to silence Buffy’s axe-waving denials. 

“No. There’s no _way_.” And grabbing up a stake from somewhere in her waistband, she dove at Gunn.

“Don't do it, Buffy!” And to Buffy’s obvious shock and betrayal, Angel actually blocked her blow. The stake skidded off his forearm, leaving behind a long, welling graze. 

_“Angel!” _

The sword rose again, and Spike wanted to shout something, wanted to exclaim, but it was too late. While Buffy was otherwise occupied, the blade had reached the top of its arc, was coming down…

Buffy saw it. Swung up in one last, desperate ploy to save the prat. Twisted the blade aside in its descent. Gunn roared, and reacted in his own last-minute ploy. Curvetted the blade around, and lunged under her axe. 

The sword punched through Angel’s chest, below the heart, right where Junior had taken it less than an hour before. 

And suddenly, Spike could move again.

/Well… fuck./

***  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
So. I know, that got a bit complex. Next chapter... that kind of continues.  
Blame Buffy's presence in a situation that was already complicated in the comix.  
  
(ie, sorry-not-sorry.)


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, amazingly enough, this is the penultimate chapter. Things get a hair complex in here, but hopefully still follow-able the way I do the exposition. We have someone blast from the past (several someones, actually) to help us along the way.
> 
> Also, at least in THIS chapter, I am NOT gonna say 'major character death'! Enjoy it while you can!!!
> 
> (Dialogue in here from "Innocence", "Becoming pt. 1" and "Fool For Love")

**B:  
  
**

There was a sword sticking out of Angel. And she was back in time. 

There was a sword sticking out of Angel, right where she'd had to kill him, with Acathla. Right where… _“NO!”_

When she staked Gunn, it was almost an afterthought. The dust was still raining down around them both when she caught Angel’s slumping form, and she pressed her hand over the hole in him, trying to keep the blood inside as the sword was wrenched out, tried to keep Gunn’s dust away from it, and oh my God! “Nonononono… why did you? Angel, what did you _do?”_

Angel shuddered and slipped further down in her arms, shock already making him chilled, clammy. So strange that he could be warm enough for it to be _wrong_ for him to be cold. “I was… supposed to die,” he whispered. “It was… what was supposed… to happen.”

Rage suddenly filled her, white-hot. It was like he had come back to her five years ago, and was telling her now what she had always suspected. He had never really been back. He had always meant to leave. And yes, she knew what that was like, but she had snapped _out_ of it, and damn it, if _she_ could come back from heaven, to here, and crawl back to life, then why couldn’t he come back from _hell_ and learn to live again? “Fine!” she half-shouted at him through tears she hadn’t known she was shedding. “Go ahead and die, then, if you feel like that's what you need. Just go! It’s what you’re good at! Just leave!”

But he was shaking his head at her, hand lifting slowly like rising through deep water to touch her cheek. “'S not… what you think.” And chocolate eyes went earnest, strangely determined. “It's… what will fix this.”

He wasn’t making any sense. Nothing made any sense anymore. Angel couldn’t die. Not again. Not like this…

“Wanted him… to do it. Maybe a little… faster…but…”

/Not through the belly. Not like with Acathla. Head off. Quick and done./

And he’d _wanted_ to die. “You idiot, _why?”_

A strange roaring seemed to be filling her ears, and shouts of alarm. “Buffy.” Spike’s voice, pricking with alarm. “They’re coming. Whatever’s left of the army he didn’t get. They’re gonna try and take him.”

She tore her face away from the pale one beneath her hands to stare around her, confused. Found Spike’s eyes, looking down at them, blue and… Well. Not exactly dispassionate, but… reserved. He was watching. He wouldn’t interfere. He wasn’t the biggest fan, but he wasn’t going to interfere. And she couldn’t think at all. “Take him?”

“Don’t let…” Angel gasped and shifted in her arms, jerking painfully. “Try to… resurrect. Altar… Gunn’s artifacts. Try to keep me from…” He winced, nodded at Spike. And something seemed to pass between them. “Gotta be this way.”

To her shock, Spike nodded back. Knelt briefly to clasp Angel by the shoulder. “Find some peace, yeah?” And then with a quick, weighted glance at Buffy he was gone, marching for the doors, sword held grimly in his fist. 

/Just, what?/

“You might… need to fight them off… if they try to… take me…”

Buffy stared down at him, nonplussed and feeling utterly at sea. “I…”

A little smile touched lips she had once kissed, long ago. “Time for me to go, Buffy. The Partners… If I die… I think they’ll… fix it all. Send us back. Or maybe… at least all of… you.”

_“What?”_

He didn’t answer, his words instead penetrating her shock to drill into an entirely other area of confusion. “You… getting your strength back… now it’s… decided?”

She was still hung up on the insanity of his bizarre deduction, still thrown by the idea that his _dying,_ of all things, might be the key to their getting home. Yet though everything in her screamed in denial of his words, still her instincts went to automatic assessment in the face of possible battle. And, yes. She no longer felt that odd paralysis, that strange weakness that had debilitated her during the standoff with Gunn. That had been so bizarre; so utterly terrifying, that feeling that her strength, her power—her demonside, she supposed—was on some sort of strange hiatus. Not resting or relaxed the way it had been for so much of the time here, where in a demon’s home dimension it had had to be prodded awake for battles and sex and things like that, but literally busy, like when she dialed it was on the other line or something. /Was it being talked to by the Powers right then, and it just… wouldn’t answer me?/

It lent credence to Angel’s incredibly stupid-sounding pronouncement, but… just, what? 

Of course, Angel would roll with it if he even half-believed it. He was always willing to sacrifice himself like that if it meant he got to save everyone else. It made her wonder just why the heck he’d been so willing to give up that stupid amulet in the first place. /I guess it kind of proves you didn’t know what it would do, or you would’ve never handed it over for me to use it on me, much less give it to Spike./ The thought no longer held the old agony. It came with a numb, even slightly fond feeling, now. 

She knew all about death-wishes. 

Somewhere off to her left, where familiar vitality hummed in a direct line to her heart, and there was only blood and life, not death… she could hear the dim sounds of combat. Could feel a sensation of grim effort. Didn’t have to look that way to know that Spike was holding the door. Hopefully the hordes wouldn’t come in through the roof again, now they’d taken care of all the spidery-types; and luckily they still had a few Spikettes around to guard the other entrances.

She couldn’t focus on anything, much. Angel, lying in her arms, had that… look. That terrifying pallor on her face that she had seen sliding over Connor; that had crept into Gris’ flesh right before the end. That tinge of ivory Buffy had seen on Mom’s face when she had found her on the couch, and that… “No, Angel, you can’t…”

“Heads… up…” he whispered, eyes rolling around to glance behind her. And, in the same instant she felt a spike of alarm, heard her mate shouting. “Buffy!”

She rolled away automatically, Angel’s head hitting the floor like a melon, and came up with the axe raised. Took off a howling demon head in one smooth motion. Stabbed another through the eye with the point of the axe, and flung the gore off the thing. 

“Sorry,” Spike called from the door, and shoved it closed again. “Buggers got through.” Reaching down, he dragged an armchair over and shoved it under the knob. “That’ll hold the bitch.”

Buffy managed a nod before she rushed back. Angel was still breathing next to the mess, if shallowly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Did I hurt your head?” The _thunk_ as she’d dropped him still echoed in her ears. 

He laughed a little; a choking, pitiful sound in the growing darkness of dimensional dusk. “Barely… felt it.” His eyes, though, weren’t fixed on her. They were gazing up, through the hole in the stained glass of the ceiling, past the Deco light fixtures. “Wish… No stars, here. Wonder… Can They see us… even in this place?”

Buffy resettled herself on the floor and reclaimed his head for her lap, terror and agony shuddering through her being at the horrible, weak whistling of his voice. “They… The Powers?”

His head lolled a little. “Used to… go to Mass, you know? Every… week, twice, three… times a week. Then… Church of Ireland, after… The English…” A long, slow, painful gasp. “Da gave up… so much for me… inherit the shop… Didn’t care. Wastrel… Carousing…”

It all made her realize how long ago he’d lived. She didn’t even understand half of what he was talking about except… he’d had a father he’d disappointed. One who hadn’t approved of him; and maybe, just maybe, that was all he had known about raising a son. Maybe that was why Spike… And why Connor…

“Didn’t care… The sacrifice. Which church. Any of…” He was rolling his head back and forth, and she as horrified to hear a gurgle of a laugh, filled with blood. “Thought it was all… such a bore…” The laugh turned to a choked sputter, and now the blood was staining his teeth, his lips this time as he spluttered through the bubbles. 

/No./

“Minute I… let the demon in… Gave the finger to God. What had He ever… done for me anyway?” The dark head lolled back and forth in her hands, rueful, pained. “Give anything now to know… if…”

Buffy bit her lip. “I can’t imagine, with everything you’ve done… And especially since… I mean, Angelus is gone. And Liam…" She struggled with it, since she definitely knew that the division she had once believed in was not at all that stark a separation.   
  
She knew one thing for sure, though. "Whatever you did before you were sired… You've already done so much to help people. And the souled part of you… I mean, you… You didn’t do all those things that the demonside of you…”

A crackle hit the voice; an almost-laugh. “Oh, Buffy… I did… enough. Tried my best to… kill Liam. Hated the… weak bastard. But couldn’t. So Liam… finally joined up. Can’t kill… the parts you need.” He sounded so rueful. “Man you know… did plenty. Before the soul… after the soul… To Spike. To Dru. To you…”

/To me? What…/ 

But he was shaking his head again. “Got a lot, still, to… make up for. No time left. Pay now instead of…” His hand slowly lifted toward the sky. Trembled, and a terrible yearning filled his voice. “I really wanted… to believe that if I… did enough…”

Dammit. He was so stupid. And she was so tired of crying. Why was she always crying over him? “You went to _hell_, Angel. I think you’ve already paid.”

Something touched his dark eyes. Surprise? “Maybe. Never… thought of that. Maybe. They… still called me… lower being. But the one… said I wasn’t. Maybe…”

He fell silent for a long time as darkness slid through the hotel, filled every corner. Over there by the door Buffy could feel Spike, watching and waiting while his grandsire breathed his slow way to finality. Buffy counted the breaths, begging for another each time and yet, as the breaths became more strained, began to bubble, perversely began to wish for them to stop. It was just so grating, so horrific to hear the struggle. He was lasting so much longer than Connor had, lying so still, not struggling…

And every once and a while, she heard the _pop_ of a bubble bursting in his mouth. It made her jump. And every time she had to shift a little, she felt him groan with the agony of it, so that it made the tears stream freshly down her face as the guilt struck her anew. Because it would all be over by now if she hadn’t deflected Gunn’s blade; but she had, and now Angel was dying a slow, horrible death when it could have been clean. 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered finally, in the darkness, and cupped his face. “So sorry that it had to happen like this. Like it did before.” /How do you apologize for condemning someone to die an excruciatingly long and painful death?/ “That it has to be so slow. I’m… so sorry that…” She bit her lip. “I didn’t understand. I just didn’t want to lose you.” She didn’t know if he could even hear her anymore, but she could no longer stand the silence, gurgling and rattling with his small agonies, the things left unsaid. “You know I’ll always love you. That’s the problem. Even when you drive me nuts, there’s a part of me that always will. And yeah, I knew I had to let you go.” She felt a little sob escape, tried to cut it off, heard it come out as a half-laugh. “I just didn’t expect it to happen like this, you jerk.”

“Maybe… right. Sorry… all the things… I did wrong… you. Us…” 

The glimmer of his eyes cut off as they fell closed, and he set to gurgling again. It was horrible, and she couldn’t help it. Knew she was supposed to let him go. Let him feel less pain, but panic set in, and she was shaking him a little, trying to get him to _breathe. _“It’s not right, Angel, this is _not_ right!”

She caught the faint glimmer as his eyes reopened. “Hurt you. Never okay… hurt you. Paying for it…”

He always thought he should be paying for something. “Oh, stop it.”

Another pained shift on the tiles. “Don’t, Buffy. God knows… hurt you enough. Only fair…”

“I mean it. Stop it. This so isn’t fair. I sent you to _hell.”_

“I… opened… Don’t…”

He was being so noble. “If I hadn’t… let Angelus out in the first place…”

He stiffened. “Two people… in that. I never… did my research. Just saw what I wanted… Took what I wanted. Not much different… than my demon… there… was I?”

He wasn’t making any sense. “That’s not the same thing, and you know it Angel. We were…”

“Yeah. Well…” She thought she saw his eyes close yet again in the dark, and his head turned a little. “I was lost. Only time… I ever felt love. Wasn’t thinking. Hurt you. Hurt everyone. Not on you. Time you stopped… blaming yourself.” And she heard the old guilt, the old agony hit his voice. “Never realized… you were.” The hand rose weakly, fingertips brushing her face. “Buffy…” And it dropped away. “Hurt you so much…” A long sigh escaped his lips. “Not surprised.”

“Not surprised what?” She was so lost. He had never known she’d blamed herself for what happened between them? How could she _not?_

Had they _both_ been sitting around taking the blame for that, all this time? /God, how much alike _are_ we?/

“Not surprised…” His head slowly turned the other way, to where Spike was another dark blob in the night, visible only due to the bright halo of his hair. “Whatever’s… between you two… At least it’s not… that.”

/Oh./ She closed her eyes. “There’s a lot of stuff there, too.” She drew in a breath and let it out, because it was the end, so she might as well be fair. “We’ve just had the time to work it out. And we decided that doing that was more important than anything else.” She touched Angel’s face. Her first love, and one from which she had learned so much; about herself, about her world. Pain was there, yes, but also self-awareness, and she couldn’t but be grateful for that. “I think maybe the difference is, working on us _helps_ us to fight the fight.”

A little sigh escaped the mouth beside her hand. She heard another bubble pop, felt him twitch a nod. “I know… how that feels.”

/He’s talking about Cordelia./ “I’m glad you do.” His face was damp now; she thought with sweat until she closed her hand to lay the backs of her fingers against his cheek and found that her fingers came away slick and sticky with blood. /Oh God./ “Maybe you should rest,” she heard herself whisper, and knew exactly what she was saying when she spoke the words. “Just rest, Angel. Everything is alright now.” He had forgiven her for killing him—again—and she had forgiven him for everything else… and now it was time.

He nodded again; just the barest acknowledging movement, and fell silent.

But not for long. Shortly after that, the murmurs started. 

She only caught the name, first. It was enough, though. “…Think I can… Just wish… Let me…” “Miss you Cordy…” Little sobs of breath and tiny whispers. “Doesn’t matter… does it? Won’t let… me come… even if Powers… Partners want me… right?” “Miss you…” “You have… Connor… at least… Cordy… please tell me… have Connor…” 

She wished he could really reach her. He obviously couldn’t. Not here, where the Senior Partners ruled, but just in this moment it only seemed fair for him to get this one last moment of peace. His desperate reaching out to something he couldn’t touch felt like a last, horrible kick in the face after so much sacrificed, so much lost. 

She truly wished he _could_ talk to Cordelia just for a second, if only to get his answers. He wanted to go to her, wanted to go to his son. She could understand his wanting to leave, if they were both there. God knew she could understand that; could understand just feeling… _done_. And yet, it sounded like he thought They wouldn’t let him be done, even if this worked, which was gut-wrenching, and the agony of it, of being bound to the mortal coil to continue the work was something that echoed in her bones with a fierce agony that rocked her. 

/I know those feels. God, just _tell_ him! Just let him reach through long enough, just this once, to get an answer! Don’t you think he deserves _that_ much?/

“He can, actually.”

Buffy blinked in the dark, startled by the faint, shimmery radiance of Wesley’s ghost. “What?”

“You’re a conduit. The Partners can’t stop Them reaching through to you. You’re the Powers’ agent here. It’s why Lorne was able to read people as long as you were close by, albeit with great strain. So open up again. Let Cordelia use you, and he will be able to speak to her in his moment of need.”

Hope surged through her. “Open up?” She could do this for him. She could do that much. “How? What…”

“You are sure you wish to do this for him?”

She frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“It is a great sacrifice, to allow someone to use your body as a conduit in this way.”

Put that way, it gave her brief pause. “Am I gonna be… possessed or something?” Serious pause. “By Cordelia? Because talk about giving me the wig.”

“Not a possession. A connection to this dimension. A way to come through. You will be… the dial on the radio, and the antenna. You are the only way she can find him, and the lightning rod by which she can tune in to a frequency which he can hear, through the static of a dimension ruled by lower beings. And, using your elevated daimon as a corpus, she can travel safely here without damage.”

“Oh.” /I’m sure all that made sense./ “As long as you’re saying it’s not a possession-by-Cordelia thing, I’m good.” Though, honestly, she might have wavered a little on that, even, as she felt the life slip, piecemeal, from Angel’s body. “Alright, what do I do?”

“Close your eyes, and breathe. Begin your favorite Slayer mediation; one which always allowed you to tune out all but the sound of one voice.”

It wasn’t Giles’ voice, but she could tune in to Wesley. He was, after all, sufficiently English and stuffy-sounding… and sure. By now, she even trusted him. 

She fell right into one of the older meditations. The crystal one. Not the Cruciamentum one, of course, but the other one. The one that always let her sink into her body completely, so that she could do crazy things like balance, and focus. The one Xander had called ‘her Jedi-Yoda-Dagobah meditation’, whatever the hell that meant. He’d asked her after barging in one time whether she was going to be able to make the crystals float if she got calm enough, which, what?

“Yes, good. Now. Reach out to that side of you which gives you your strength. Become fully aware of it. It is the part of you which is always awake, always seeking, always protecting… always torn between worlds.”

God knew she knew that part of her. She had become most fully aware of it as a separate side of self while here, when it had retreated. When she had felt its partial loss. It was the ever-restless portion; the part which, here, had become so paradoxically relaxed. Had been calm, for the first time in her life. 

It had taken coming to hell to know how much she needed it. To miss it. To seek out, feel for it. 

But how to _find_ it?

She reached out for her demonside. 

“That part of you is somnolent right now. It likes it here, in this place. Ask it to wake a bit. Ask it to reach out…”

She wasn’t sure, honestly, how to locate the married edges of her being. She was, after all, singular. One. Fused. She was a single entity. She was either one or the other; all or nothing, awake or asleep, and there just weren’t… separate parts. /I’m demon-tea in human-water./ Her demon-y parts were all seeped into her all over. Infused was such a good word, because from what she’d learned by talking to Spike, it seemed like he was more of a container. Yeah, he was kind of tea too, but his composite mix-y-ness had happened over time. Except from the way he talked about it, it was almost like… the container of his being still had, like, planes. Surface facets that responded to different stimuli. So even if he was all mix-y inside, and couldn’t tell anymore what was baby-demon-William and what was adult-human-William and what was Spike, the persona the demon had grown into as an adult… the facets were still there when needed, as strengths. 

For her, though, her demon-y-ness didn’t have facets; or at least it never had back home. Till she’d come here and it had decided to take a nap, it was just everywhere. All through her. Till she’d come here she had never had… sides, or faces to her being. The demony-ness of her was just there, a part of her every cell and reaction. Always awake, always around, so when that side of her had done stuff on its own, she had never been able to parse it as a separate part of her being. It simply reared its head and opened its eyes with a hungry, greedy snarl whenever it saw a good fight coming down the pike, or felt edgy, or got a quick glimpse of… 

Well, there was one way she knew she could always find her demon-side, and without any real difficulty. She had a handle, now; a convenient tag to tug on. 

Reaching out, she slid her consciousness along the bond between herself and Spike. Felt rather than saw his head jerk over toward her in the dark, wondering just what the hell she was doing. And then; realization, because he had been listening to the conversation, of course. And then he was helping; coming along with her, hand over hand on the blood-link between them to rouse her somnolent demon-ness. A little tug at the margins of her being; at the part of herself that was linked to another. That was mated. 

And the side of her that snoozed—exhausted from conduiting earlier, maybe?—snapped awake with a rush, came roaring back to life in response to the other half of her being; the vitality that was Spike. She felt the surge of power, the outpouring of awareness and vigor sparkling through her arms, her legs, her being. And wished she could ‘feel’ gratitude in Spike’s direction; send him thoughts or something so he’d know she was grateful for his help as her body and mind sparked to life with the awareness of the fullness of her existence. 

She thought she felt something like acknowledgment before the ‘feel’ of him slipped away, and then there was just the surging restlessness, rolling through her; that other part of her wondering why it had been awakened when there was no one to fight, no one to fuck, nothing to do right now, and it could be napping, it could be…

“You should probably tell me what to do, quick, before it goes back to sleep.” Her own voice sounded logy, strangely monotone to her ears. 

“You don’t have to do anything,” Wesley’s voice answered quietly. “She’s been waiting.” And, abruptly, Buffy felt her body begin to shake. 

Her own awareness seemed to shunt aside, and she could swear that the rushing energy she normally spent slaying was abruptly taken up by a sort of pulling-upward-and-reaching sensation. And then it was like all the parts of her that normally filled her with urgency were instead being filled with a kind of weirdly placid potential energy, just brimming in her; like she was some sort of… cup, and starlight (starlight? But there were no stars here) was being _poured_ into her.

In her lap, now somehow far distant and spreading out off to one side of her, Angel let out a vast gasp, and his body arched up. His eyes went wide as hell, and his expression, somehow much more visible in the dark now, turned to something Buffy had never seen before. 

He looked elated. He looked elevated. _“Cordelia?”_

Wherever the light was coming from, a familiar voice was issuing from it too. “Hey, Big Guy.”

Angel’s eyes were nearly invisible in the dark, but Buffy could see the whites of them. Could see the blood-slicked planes of his face gleaming in a strange new radiance. Could see the incredulous expression on his face now, could see the tracks of tears on his gory cheeks. Could see him well enough to tell that he was staring right at Buffy… Because there was some light again. Light because… 

Buffy was just now starting to realize that the light all around them was coming off of her. That she was… wearing it. Like a suit. 

Cordelia hadn’t possessed her. She wasn’t being worn, or driven. Her body wasn’t being borrowed. The entity that was Cordelia-of-the-Powers had no need of a body. No. 

Buffy was wearing _Cordelia_. The entity that Cordelia had become was sitting all around her like a sort of crackling mask; using her conduit-thing as a lightning rod to ground itself long enough to have a nice chat with Angel, and this was effing bizarre.

And the way Angel stared was a revelation. It made Buffy’s heart do uncomfortable backflips, and it terrified her. Until she realized… he wasn’t staring at her at all. 

Actually, it was _very_ clear from the way he was looking at her that he was not even seeing her. For one thing, Angel had never looked at her that way. Not once. 

Angel had always looked at her with this weird combination of love, admiration, regret, and sorrow. Never this… This profound joy, with this delighted smile and this… This expression of such complete and utter relief. It made him look lighter. Younger. Smoothed his cares and even all his current agony away. 

She had never seen him look like this. 

He looked like a real boy.

Angel was looking at Buffy, but he was seeing Cordelia, and what he was seeing… 

/Just, wow. Good to know./

“You _came.”_

“I was invited. Hey. I’m proud of you. You know that, right?”

God, this was bizarre. And Buffy felt super intrusive; like she was in the middle of someone else’s convo and she should leave them alone or something. Of course, she couldn’t, and when the hell had Cordelia decided to sound so grown up? She sounded all… womanly and adult and quiet and… _giving_.

Angel’s face _bloomed_, and holy crap, he had _definitely_ never looked at Buffy that way, no matter what she might have said to him. She could have given him all the approval in the universe, but it would never have made him look one-tenth this certain. He would have just taken it as more evidence that he needed to go out and get back to being guilty or something. “Was it… enough?”

A low, regretful sigh. “It is for me, Angel, but I don’t get to make the rules.”

A little nod over there, far away on Buffy’s knees. “I…figured.”

“They still want you to do a few more things. But soon.”

A little hitch of a sob. “I really… miss you.”

“I know. I miss you too. But you’re almost there. And I’m here. I’m watching you every day. You can hear me, you know? It sounds like some dumb movie line, but I’m on the wind and all that. When you get back… I’ll still be with you, okay?”

A slow sigh, settling through the large, heavy body. “Okay.” Another gurgling sob. “I’m trying.”

“I know.” Something tight—maybe a new urgency—touched Cordelia’s voice, and Buffy thought she felt her demon-y side shift restlessly. “Listen. Time moves different where I am. I know it doesn’t help you much… but I’m not going anywhere, alright?”

“I don’t know… if I can…” 

A smile touched the other woman’s voice. “You can. Even if you’re going to try to rush it. And listen. When you do… that’s not gonna be all your fault, either. It’s just a step on the ride, so don’t be too hard on yourself. Even though I know you always are.”

“Cordy…”

“I have to go.”

Pain lanced through his expression; a greater agony than he’d betrayed even in the slow, drawn-out extremes of dying. “No! Please. Stay… with me… till I…”

A hesitation. “I’ll try.” And for the first time, she addressed Buffy directly. “Is this bothering you Buffy?”

Buffy winced. “I’m trying to mind my own business. But I think… I might be losing my hold on the demon-y bits. They get all sleepy here. Something about wanting to chill in the nice demonic atmosphere.”

Understanding flitted through the crackling energy. “Then we’ll make the most of the time we have. And… thank you.”

“No problem.” God, this was bizarre. And uncomfortable. But… she’d do it, and more. 

For one thing, she was learning a hell of a lot about things she probably should have known a _minute_ ago. Like, for one thing, Angel had never once looked at her or talked to her the way he addressed Cordelia. He had always treated her with respect, of course, and admiration—except for the time he’d called her a brat—but for the most part she had always felt a little smaller around him. She had used to like it. Used to felt warm, safe, protected, but… Over the years Buffy had come to resent that faint air of overprotectiveness, his hints of wanting to control her choices, and the way he tended to push her away when she resisted as if everything between them was an all-or-nothing proposition. The asperity over her other relationships, and the way he always talked about them like there was some sort of fated goal they should both be striving toward. Like they were destined, like they owed each other a future she couldn’t even see anymore, didn’t want to be locked into because she had once felt that same sense of destiny as a teenager, in another life. 

When he spoke to Cordelia, it wasn’t to a goal, or a destiny, or something else… inanimate like that. He was talking to a _person_. A real, live person, and an equal adult. Angel had never expected Cordelia to lean on him, Buffy realized, except as much as he leaned on her, and… she wasn’t idealized. /Cordy wasn’t his reason to change. She was his partner while he traveled the road. So she isn’t his… prize or something. She’s his missing _companion_./ 

God. /Has Angel always thought of me as… some kind of object? Like a trophy or something? Like, he saw me and fell for me and thought, if I’m good enough I can _get_ her?/ Because Buffy wasn’t sure about a lot of things, but she was definitely sure she had been objectified enough, as a weapon and as a ward, as warrior and hero. To be objectified as a lover’s ideal and eventual reward was almost worse. But it made her get it, finally. The difference. 

/He sees Cordelia as a _person_. That’s why he misses her so much. He sees her that way because she’s walked the journey with him. The same way… Spike’s always seen me as a person. And the same way I learned to see Spike as one, and not just ‘one of the vamps’, or a symbol of the thing I was sent here to fight./

Which made her wonder, now, if she had honestly ever seen Angel as a person, really, before they’d broken up, or if he’d just been an ideal for her too. A teenage girl’s idea of ‘destiny’. /After all, how much did I really actually know him, then? Only as much as he let me./ A little bit of a revelation to have at this stage of the game, but it didn’t even shock her anymore so much as it… enlightened. /For sure not enough to see him as a real, whole person like I do now, so I had to see him as what I made him in my mind. An ideal. Which means…/

Relationships with real people you really got to know, for better or worse… There were no shocks in those. And they were _real_. /We so ended up with the right people after all./

Angel was struggling now, finally, as his oxygen levels dipped lower than his body could handle. His legs twitched, torso jerking, and the blood coming from his belly to stain his shirt now only oozed to the floor rather than gushing, to gleam in the faint, glimmering light all around them. “Cordy,” he whispered. And gurgled some more.

“Shh. I’m still here Big Guy.”

Despite his dying agonies he smiled; the kind of smile Buffy had never seen from him in all their time together. Wide and genuine. Simple and delighted and lighthearted… and there were even lines for it in his face. Lines enough to make her realize… Cordy had made him smile like that a _lot_. 

It broke her heart to see it. To see what he had lost. 

/You were never really mine, were you. I was just getting you set till she could pick you up, wasn’t I?/ But then, in a way that was kind of what happened with her and Spike, so she supposed that was fair. /We were each other’s training wheels. Time we both admitted it, and let go of even all the guilt and pain it caused us. Let go of all of it, and let it just be a memory. Let first love be… just that./

While the glow settled around them both, time wore on. At some point Angel lapsed into the long silence, the only indication he was still in the land of the living the occasional hitched, awful, drowning breaths. He sounded like he was underwater now, and she knew he would be, soon. Buffy focused on holding onto the edges of her sleepy demon, trying to keep it awake so that Cordelia could hang around for the last of it. And all the while, as she and her glowy companion sat vigil, linked by an ‘elevated’ tool of the Powers, Angel fought.

And something overtook Buffy, in those moments while Angel struggled and gasped for the wisps of oxygen and life beneath her hands. It felt like a Slayer dream. And it was a doozy.

_She was walking the landscape of the dream for the first time in months. It felt as familiar as any home. As the Pink Palace. As Rome. As Revello. As the modest Santa Monica two-bedroom of her childhood. _

_The arid wind swept her cheeks, blew her hair back. Behind her, the rocks—_those_ rocks, the ones she could find anywhere—loomed like a sphinx over her shoulder. /When’s Sineya gonna show up?/ she wondered, and paced the sands, settling in for the metaphorical ride. _

_It wasn’t the First Slayer who strode across the sands to meet her, though, but _Cordelia_. A very much changed Cordelia, too, from the girl Buffy remembered. This was a woman; self-possessed, powerful, confident, limber, kind of deadly, even, despite the flowing, diaphanous stuff she was wearing… Which, okay; nice outfit, really. Kind of sari-like. Good desert wear, very stylish. Also, give credit where it was due; excellent hair. Considering the probable state of Buffy’s own hair at this point in the proceedings, almost five months into hell, she was even a little bit jealous._

_Also, Cordy was glowing. Let’s not forget the glowing. White light emanated from said shoulder-length, wavy mane to crackle all around her body in what was unmistakably a halo, but it totally cascaded from her head-first—and for the record, Buffy really got why ancient humans used to draw emissaries of the Powers with that light circling their heads like that; though, little circlet it was not. Not by any stretch—and she was _not_ cuddly in that light. Good, yes. She _radiated_ goodness. She was what Spike would call ‘effulgent’. Boy howdy._

_She was also, very clearly, super freaking deadly. An image aided by the fact that she carried a sword. A katana. Also glowy—maybe even made of light—so there was that. “Um, hey Cordy. Long time no see.” At a loss for what else to say, Buffy gestured around her. “Welcome to the Slayer dream-desert?”_

_Cordy smiled at her… and that, at least, had hints of the old Cordelia in it. A little satire behind what was actually a very sympathetic expression. And, for the record, it kind of wigged Buffy a lot more to see Cordelia Chase looking sympathetic than it did seeing her wearing a flame-y halo and carrying a sword made of light. Just saying._

_“Nice place you’ve got here,” Cordy answered, laying the sword casually—and competently, by the way—on her shoulder to look around. “Haven’t actually been here before. Kind of… bleak, but in that pretty way.” Her eyes came back to Buffy’s and she smiled slightly. “You miss it?”_

_Buffy felt the hard smile rise unbidden. “Meh. You know. Haven’t liked flying blind, but…” Looked around a little herself. “It’s such a headache trying to figure it all out. What They’re telling me. Easier now, you know, than when I was fifteen or sixteen, but…” A little shrug, because, you know, lifetime’s worth of work squeezed into a finite period. No matter how long she got, Slayers always had an expiration date… and it wasn’t like she’d done what she was supposed to from the start. Keep a dream-journal. Study the data. Look for repeated symbolism. ‘Learn the language of her dreamscape’, blah blah blah. “First time you’ve, um, been here, then? Since…”_

_The smile turned ironic. Pure Cordelia. “Yeah.” Another glance around. “I mean, I could’ve dragged you somewhere more comfy for me—better for my hair, because, you know, dry much?—but I was kind of curious, since I might’ve ended up here eventually myself…”_

_/Huh?/_

_“And I figured, why not go somewhere I could pluck out of your head quick, since it takes less energy? I mean, I’m kind of split in two places right now…”_

_“Oh. Right.” Cordy was also talking to Angel right now. Buffy was so caught up in the whole ‘back in the Slayer-dream for the first time in months’ thing that she’d completely forgotten about what was going on out there where her body lived. “Yeah. Okay. Also probably a limited-time-offer type thing, right? Quick insights from the Great Beyond, no exchanges or refunds?”_

_“Basically. So let me be brief. I’ll… Hm.” Cordy looked briefly stumped, then shrugged. “Let’s go to a movie, okay?”_

_That took Buffy aback. “A movie? We’re out here in the middle of the desert and you wanna go to a _movie?”

_ “Yeah.” Her ex-frenemy, now higher-power-emissary sort of shrugged and waved a hand. There was a whooshing noise. Buffy whirled, and behind them, against the backdrop of _that_ rock, stood a vast screen, like she was at a drive-in. Which, just, wow. She had only been to one of those once, before they all vanished. Her father had thought it would be fun to take ‘his girls’ to the last of them, up in the Valley, when Buffy had been about four or five. It had been after they’d gone to a little fair in somewhere like Simi Valley or Sherman Oaks or something like that. They’d sat in their aging Ford Escort and listened to the crappy audio and watched the thing where the robot fell in love with the girl—what was it called? ‘Short Circuit’?—and Buffy, high on a post-cotton-candy and dizzy-from-the-spinny-boats haze, had been kind of freaked by the whole thing. Her safe family car invaded by a bizarre, ET-like anthropomorphic AI, she had crawled up into the front seat into her parents’ laps to fall asleep there where she was safe._

_“I feel like I’m in ‘Grease’,” she now informed Cordelia blandly as the screen against the rocks flickered to life. “And like I should have popcorn.” Shot the taller woman a glance. “Is there gonna be sound?”_

_“Yes sound. No popcorn. Shut up, Buffy; this is taking a ton of concentration.”_

_Damn Powers. With a sigh, Buffy turned back to the screen and narrowed her eyes. Showtime it was._

_The scene opened on some dirty alley somewhere in some city she didn’t know. A creepy-looking dude in a bad fedora and an ill-fitting jacket who probably thought he looked cool but didn’t swaggered up to some drunk huddled in the nastiness in some dark, puddled corner. _

_The drunk unrolled. Coughed. Sniffed. Came to his feet—seriously filthy guy, by the way, and was it her, or was this dude strangely familiar somehow?—and started to… _

_Oh, hell no. The homeless guy was chasing a rat._

_Seriously, how hungry did you have to be to…_

_The guy dove after the squeaking rodent; right into a pile of trash. Missed. Came up cursing and flailing at the bags of garbage as fedora approached, started talking… _

_“I thought you said there was gonna be sound.” Buffy was feeling deeply perturbed by now. She felt like she should know who the homeless guy was. It was so dark on the screen that she wasn’t sure, but that broken person almost looked like…_

_“Get away from me.”_

_/Oh, God, no./_

_“Sorry. Didn’t have it all the way tuned in. My bad.”_

_“What are you gonna do,” Fedora was saying. “bite me? Horrors! A vampire!”_

_Angel looked like total shit. And he was eating rats. Just… wow. And who was this idiot harassing him?   
  
“Ah, but you wouldn't bite me on account of your poor, tortured soul. It's so sad, a vampire with a soul. It's so poignant.”_

_“Who are you?”_

_/A question on everybody’s mind…/ That voice sounded super-familiar, and the really bad New York accent tugged at the corners of Buffy’s mind. She felt like she should recognize…_

_“Let's take a walk.”_

_Fedora turned with Angel, and, as his sharp little face caught the light of the cruddy streetlamps, recognition exploded very abruptly in Buffy’s mind, through the haze of the massive divide pre- and post-heaven and a whole world of post-traumatic stress-shutdown that had, in all honesty, made recall of all but the most blazing details of a certain period of her life pretty fuzzy. “Hey, that’s whatshisname! Whistler!”_

_“Bingo.”_

_“God, he has the worst fashion sense. I mean, thank goodness you got tapped. As, you know, messengers go…”_

_Cordy smirked a little. “I might give Them a little bit of an edge when it comes to credibility with the natives,” she agreed._

_“You’re for sure prettier.”_

_“Thanks. But shh.”_

_Buffy focused on the screen as Whistler and Angel wandered out to a hot dog stand. Whistler ordered a dog and razzed Angel about his rat-diet. Informed him there was such a thing as butcher-shops, which, like, for real, was a thing, and what was Angel _doing? _ He was so out of it, so starved, he almost walked in front of a car. “When was this?” Buffy demanded of Cordelia._

_“Just watch,” Cordy answered intensely._

_Angel sounded at the end of his not-very-long rope. He sounded broken, hopeless. “I wanna know who you are.”_

_Whistler kind of had a rat-face, actually. “And I wanna know who _you_ are.”_

_Angel looked pretty damn confused at that. “You already do.”_

_“Not yet. But I'm looking to find out. 'Cause you could go either way here.”_

_“Okay,” Buffy interrupted, turning to Cordelia, “is this before…”_

_“Shh. Listen.”_

_Whistler was getting into his hotdog, talking about his gig with the Powers, kind of propositioning Angel with a whole ‘you’re at a crossroads’ spiel. Yadda. _

_“You're not a vampire.”_

_“A demon... technically. I mean, I'm not a bad guy. Not all demons are dedicated to the destruction of all life.”  
  
/Okay, wow. Why didn't I realize way back then what it meant that a demon-y weasel like him was doing messenger duty? I even asked him straight up if he was sent to even the score between good and evil, and somehow it didn't occur to me that if a demon could do that, that demons could be good? Where's your_ head,_ Buffy?/_

_Over on the screen, Angel looked even more confused. “Whaddya mean, I can go either way?”_

_“I mean that you can become an even more useless rodent than you already are, or you can become someone. A person. Someone to be counted.”_

_“Oh,” Buffy breathed. “He had visions? And the Powers sent him to Angel, to what? Get him on the right path?”_

_Cordelia shrugged. “It takes all kinds. And we use whoever we can.”_

_Buffy made a face, because it was one thing for him to be a balancing force, but a messenger for the Powers? “Seriously, _Whistler_, though?” she asked, dubious._

_“I know, he’s kind of slimy.”_

_Whistler was still goading Angel into chucking over the rat-eating gig for something bigger. _

_“What do you want from me?”_

_“I want you to see something. We'd have to leave now. You see, and then you tell me what you wanna do.”_

_The screen paused. _

_“Oookay… What did he show Angel?”_

_Cordelia turned to Buffy and rolled her eyes. “What do you_ think,_ Buffy. Jeez. Sometimes you’re super slow, you know that?” And she waved her hand at the big projector-thing again. _

_Buffy turned back when she caught moving pictures once more out of the corner of her eye. Bright ones, this time. No dark alley. _

_Herself. Sitting on the steps of…_

_/Oh!/ Hemery. _

_Sucking on a lollipop. Looking… /Oh my God…/ Super young. Like, really,_ really_ young. /Was I _ever_ that young? I look younger than _Dawn_ ever looked!/ _

_“Wait. He showed Angel _me?”

_“Destiny, a guide to find his way out of the dark, blah-de-blah-de-blah… Yeah.”_

_Buffy was starting to understand Spike’s issue. She wasn’t sure when this was, but she had to have been just barely fifteen here, if that._

_God, this was bizarre, watching herself on TV. Not that she hadn’t watched videos of herself before. Cheerleading stuff, dance recitals when she was a kid. Skating. Birthdays. Her father had once been doting enough to rent a camera here and there. Mom too, after Dad had stopped bothering. But… Well. This was different. Weird. For one, the perspective was oddly voyeuristic. Far away. From the parking lot, almost, over the shoulder of an old Impala with blacked-out windows…_

_/Oh. Oh, man. No way./ _

_Spike had said that Drusilla said Angel had followed her to Sunnydale from LA. No way was this…_

_The driver's side window rolled down slightly… and there was Angel, squinting out into the bright daylight of California; staying just out of the rays. Watching Buffy. Eyes straining to focus on her while she talked to Kimberly, Nicki, and Cassandra about whatever stupid thing she’d cared about then. Some boy, probably, and how best to toy with his heart, or maybe clothes._

_She watched Angel watch her as the other girls departed, and she remained behind, waiting for something. Who knew what. /Probably some dumb boy. No other reason to kick it on the steps once school was actually out./_

_A man in a dark suit appeared in front of her, and in that instant, Buffy remembered the day. What she’d been doing. All of it. /Oh my God, that’s _Merrick!_ Holy crap…/ _

_Tears filled her eyes, and this was not fair. “Turn it off.”_

_“Sorry Buffy, no can do.”_

_“This is not fair. He’s _dead_. Dead because of me. I don’t want to _see_ this.”_

_“It’s not your fault he died. You weren’t even all the way trained…”_

_“I said turn it _off!”

_ Cordelia’s eyes on her were sad, but uncompromising. “Not yet.”_

_Buffy turned away, refusing to witness the moment when her first Watcher pulled her from the normal world forever. Turned her into ‘the Chosen One’… Well, someone had already died and done that, but she’d been doing a great job of pretending the things she’d been feeling were just some weird post-pubescent thing, so, you know. _

_In a couple weeks Merrick would be dead, Hemery’s gym would be in ashes, she’d be in a mental health ward for a few weeks, on drugs that didn’t keep down the roiling urges, fighting inside her mind for some thin grasp on whether she was actually sane, or… And her parents would be well on the way to a divorce. Shortly thereafter, she’d be prepping for a nice, one-way trip to the Sunnydale hellmouth and her destiny. _

_She bit her lip and fought not to remember the conversation. Her asinine attempts to get the old, fat interloper to leave her alone so she could wait for… whatever his name was. Tyler or something. Her stuttered confusion over his insistence. Her questions about whether she was being pursued for that little spot of shoplifting; a lark, spurred by high energy that came, she knew now, from ferocious new Slayer vibes as much as the confusion of a child trapped in a cracking home. And then, finally, Merrick’s words, breaking through. “I don't have a destiny. I'm destiny-free, really.”_

_“Yes, you have. You are the Chosen One. You alone can stop them.”_

_/Oh God./_

_“Who?”_

_“The vampires.”_

_Buffy closed her eyes. “Even then, from the beginning. It wasn’t about the rest, for them. He didn’t say, ‘the demons’. He didn’t… Just ‘the vampires’.”_

_“Well, you know. If you get that out front from the start…” Cordy sounded patient and slightly amused. “And, you know, the demon thing’s such a broad subject. Breaking you in easy probably seemed like a good idea…”_

_“Getting their tool off on the right murder-y foot probably seemed like the right idea. You know, before I got any ideas.” She opened her eyes again, stared at the scene. The first vampire she’d ever loved was already there. Watching her get her ‘official’ Calling. Her invite to be his enemy, forever. And the look on Angel’s face was… Okay. Weirdly obsessive._

_The expression was still there as the scene shifted. Angel, watching her in her first stumbling, terrible, incredibly clumsy fight with a vamp in Forest Lawn. /God, I was horrible. Worse than the Potentials. And Angel’s just standing there watching. I mean, I know Merrick was there, but…/_

_/He stood back a lot back in the beginning, too, in Sunnydale. Like he was afraid to get involved. It was so weird./ She couldn’t quite remember when he’d actually started chipping in. It didn’t make sense, because clearly she couldn’t handle herself yet. It was one thing to step back and let her enjoy a fight when she knew what she was doing; to avoid stepping on her fun when she was having a nice workout… but this? She was clearly outclassed, in danger; just a kid. What the hell?_

_If that was Spike, he’d be in it pronto. No questions. He’d only stepped back and watched when he knew she was fine on her own. He never got involved if he knew she could handle herself; but when he knew she needed him he was always there; without question. With Angel it was… weirdly the other way._

_/Or, at least that’s the way it was once Spike was invested, anyway./ _

_/Maybe… Angel wasn’t invested yet?/ _

_It begged the question. /Huh. Were you not invested yet in Sunnydale? When did you… invest?/_

_The scene shifted again. To outside… her old bedroom in Santa Monica? /Okay, weird./_

_She saw herself exit the bathroom, reenter her bedroom. Probably washing off vamp-dust and graveyard stains. /First time for everything. Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life, Buffy./_

_Inside the house she could hear her parents fighting. It made her quail. /So not a first, there./ Watched herself try not to cry as the battle raged below; just one of many that would destroy her family. _

_Then… a shadow moved. A familiar one._

_/Oh, God, was that Angel? Was he… watching me?/_

_But she didn’t really need to ask it out loud. She’d seen that look. Knew it well, having seen it often enough since then, in Sunnydale. There was a light of decision in his eyes, there in the darkness._

_And longing. _

_God, this was weird_

_The streetlights were gone. The world was a curved roof, dully gleaming. Dripping, stale-looking water. _

_A sewer. Whistler, waiting. Angel approaching. “She's gonna have it tough, that Slayer. She's just a kid. The world's full of big, bad things.”_

_“I wanna help her. I want... I wanna _become_ someone.”_

_Buffy’s heart melted a little, hearing the old vibrancy in his voice._

_“God, jeez, look at you. She must be prettier than the last Slayer.”_

_It froze the old warm thing inside Buffy’s heart. /Okay, wow. So… Whistler’s a skeez. He goes straight from calling me ‘just a kid’ to asking Angel if he’s into me? What’s that?/_

_Buffy frowned when she realized that Angel wasn’t arguing or denying. He was actually looking away._

_/Oh. Crap./_

_“This isn't gonna be easy. The more you live in this world, the more you see how apart from it you really are. And this is dangerous work. Right now, you couldn't go three rounds with a fruit fly.”_

_“I wanna learn from you.”_

_“Alright.”_

_“But I don't wanna dress like you.”_

_“Again, you're annoying me. You're lucky we need you on our side.”_

_/I… maybe didn’t need to see this./ _

_The scene switched, with violent suddenness, to a very recognizable bed, in a very recognizable room. One she would never forget. And Angel’s naked back. His tattoo flexing. Buffy turned immediately; an instantaneous reaction. This was, after all, a nightmare she had had often enough; something that should have been a pleasantly revisited dream. Would have been, for any other girl. /But not for me, of course./ “I don’t wanna see this.” _

_“Not my favorite moment either,” Cordelia answered grimly. “You gotta stand it, so do I.”_

_Buffy sighed and turned back. Tried to focus on the wall above her own face… and… /God, I was still so _young_./ Probably too young, no matter what I went through to make me _feel_ older./ Weird to think of it now. She had, after all, felt so ready then. “Are They gonna make us watch… after?” she asked, equally grimly._

_“I think that’s the point.”_

_It was actually over… pretty quickly, and wow. Now that she watched—and remembered-slash-compared—Angel hadn’t been much with the foreplay, had he? Which was… well. Anyway, the aftermath was nice. She still remembered it fondly, when she couldn’t avoid remembering at all. Which was mostly what she tried to do these days; or pretty much ever since it happened, since the aftermath of the aftermath had been so… well. _

_She braced herself when he woke up. Ran out to deal with the return of his soul, in the rain. Saw him feed. It didn’t even hurt anymore, actually. /The demon do what the demon do. Angelus was probably pretty damn hungry along about then. Years of denial and all that. At least he didn’t come right in and drain _me,_ or torture anyone. That time./_

_Of course, then she had to watch herself returning, later, confused and made uncertain by her then-lover’s bizarre desertion. Steeled herself for the words that had once cut her to shreds._

_And could tell immediately, the difference. The way he moved, the way he talked. There had been so many signs, if she’d wanted to read them. But so many of her own childish fears, her youthful lack of self-confidence had gotten in the way… and she had put it all on herself. _

_“Yeah. Like I really wanted to stick around after that.”_

_God, he’d been so snide. The part of her that had been carrying this moment around since she was seventeen flinched away, wanted to cover her ears, la la la it away… But looking at it now, from some adult, objective distance… was it her, or was Angelus almost… trying a little too hard to be nonchalant?_

_“You got a lot to learn about men, kiddo. Although I guess you proved that last night.”_

_/Okay, asshole. Of _course_ I did. But that was your job; to teach me, you dick. Granted, evil sociopathic vamp, so of course you’d throw it in my face instead, but… why am I taking it so personally now? I mean, at that point in my life, why should I have known _anything?_ All I had to bring to the table was my heart and a lot of willingness, and I did that. Period./_

_/Wow./ It came to her, totally belatedly, after damn near five years. /There wasn’t anything _wrong_ with me. I didn’t do _anything_ wrong./_

_“Let's not make an issue out of it, okay?” He was slinging his coat on… and was it her, or was he actually… running away from her? That wasn’t… like the Angelus she’d gotten to know later. That Angelus would’ve stayed longer; tortured her for hours, till she ran away in a sobbing mess of tears. He was actually leaving first. _

_Had her emotional outbursts actually… gotten to him? Shaken him? “In fact, let's not talk about it at all. It happened.”_

_Another revelation. Angel was still in there, busting out to get free. Angel loved her, and he was driving Angelus nuts in that moment, because that side of her then-lover had badly wanted to comfort her, tell her what he would actually say if he’d been in charge. To wrap her in his arms and say it was wonderful, that that was the best night of his life; all of the things that would have changed everything. _

_Angelus was running. Putting on his coat and bolting, because… Wow. Some part of Angelus had loved her, and it had driven him nuts. That was why he’d gone schizo and turned into a batshit, obsessive psychopath determined to stalk her and her friends to death. Because Angel wouldn’t shut up about what Angelus had done to her, and the pissed-off, confused demon had wanted her out of his head. _

_Because, for the first time in who knew how many hundreds of years, someone had made him _feel_._

_“I… I don't understand. Was it m… me?” Her worst fear, then, because—/Oh God/—she had been too young, probably. “Was I not… good?”_

_“You were great. Really. I thought you were a pro.”_

_The snide laughter, the smirky insult—/You’re either shit in bed or you’re basically a prostitute, but either way you’re worthless; God, Angelus could really pile ‘em on, huh?/—the ‘catch you later’ fingers, the slimy-guy routine… God. How hadn’t she noticed it was all as much an act as anything when compared to the completely lethal, utterely calculated Angelus of later. Because this? Was so not the guy who had killed fish in Willow’s bedroom to freak them all out, or had left Jenny in Giles’ bed with the roses and the creepy music and the art, or…_

_/And I completely never thought about it again to analyze it and realize… I got to him. I actually _got_ to him. And that’s why…/_

_Well, blame that on her state of complete emotional wreckage from then on. She’d been acting on total instinct and wallowing in terror and betrayal and… Basically she had in no way been at her best. And she’d been too young. Way too young. “How can you say this to me?”_

_“Lighten up. It was a good time. It doesn't mean like we have to make a big deal._

_“It _is_ a big deal!”_

_/For you, Buffy, and for Angel… but for Angelus? Unnecessary complication. And he’s really not loving it. _Look_ at him!/_

_“It's what? Bells ringing, fireworks, a dulcet choir of pretty little birdies?” That snarky laugh still haunted her nightmares, sometimes. “Come on, Buffy. It's not like I've never been there before.”_

_The unfairness of that still bothered her, but it was, after all, what someone like Angelus would say. Or, she supposed, any asshole football player, so at least if she was gonna pick a shitty one… Because the point was, _she_ hadn’t been there before. The dick. /But, you know, it was all about _you_, right?/_

_And she had bought the entire thing, hook, line, and sinker. /Worse, dammit, I _believed_ it; for years. That it was _me;_ that it was my fault. That if I was somehow better, you wouldn’t…/ Which was patently ludicrous, since the whole point was, being happy with her during, and after, was precisely _why _he’d gone bad. /And yet I still believed it; with Parker, even with Riley. Till Spike…/ God, she had hated every second of Spike telling her _why_ he had thought she was good in bed… but she had also reveled in it. Someone wanted her desperately for what she could do to him. Wanted her more every second. Craved her. Someone who was objectively, damnably amazing in the sack had told her she had given him ‘a run for his money’. That had been…_

_Well. Something she had desperately needed after… this. And also the reason she had never let them stay happy after… just in case. Always ended every encounter with a blow, or a cruel word… or just ran. Because this? _

_/Can’t let the demon come back out, right, Buffy? Leave first, before the faces turn, even if the person you’re fucking is already the demon, already loves you; even if you picked him that way because if you’re starting from the bottom there’s no surprises, nowhere to fall to, no danger, no pit to open at your feet when, if you dare to fall asleep…/_

_Not that she had ever dared, with Spike, before. Not after, either, with the soul. Not till… here._

_Of _course_ not, because that would be… trusting. _

_“I should've known you wouldn't be able to handle it.”_

_/Because it wasn’t casual. But it will be, for me, for a long damn time, you horse’s ass. And even when it’s not, I’m gonna try to make it that way. Or even worse; just plain awful. You’re turning me into _you_, for _him_, for years. To avoid _this_./ Which was even worse, since Spike had already had this—had this man—throughout his entire fledgehood… and no wonder he’d imprinted on her, Buffy, acting like this, and there was an entire other ball of wax she didn’t want to think about right now, because ugh._

_“I love you!”_

_“Love you, too. I'll call you.”_

_The scene paused with Angelus’ hand on the door, about to leave her alone in her tear-stained, seventeen-year-old misery. /Yeah, yeah; ‘Here’s lookin’ at you, kid’. I get it. But… He wasn’t… that nuts yet. He wasn’t… the Angelus I got to know later. He was… different./_

_/The Angelus Spike knew was different. The Angelus I had to kill… it was because he… loved me. In his own way. And he _hated_ that./_

_“Do you get it?” Cordelia asked softly, and her voice, quiet in the background, was actually incredibly empathetic. _

_“Yeah. Actually, I do.”_

_“Okay, good. Because there’s a lot more ground to cover. See, the thing is…” She waved a hand at the screen, and the scene changed. To Buffy standing there, tormented and broken, holding the sword that had punched through the resurgent Angel to pin him through the awakened Acathla. His arm was out, stretched to her, love in his eyes. The last time he had ever looked at her with that absolute a love, untainted by… everything._

_Buffy swung away once more, back to the screen. “Okay, why this?”_

_Cordelia sighed a little sadly. “I didn’t pick ‘em, Buffy. I’m just the messenger…”_

_“Great.”_

_“…But I’d say… this was another nexus-moment. The decision was made. He was sent to you to be a Champion. To stand by your side and be a stalwart bulwark and all that noble stuff… with, you know, the side-benefit that he could be reformed. The Powers really like taking split-figures and playing dice with them, and seeing if they can repossess souls that were removed from their board by other gods. The Partners, the Gods of Chaos…”_

_“Hold up; the Gods of Chaos?”_

_“You’d call them evil, but most vampires aren’t really evil on the same level as the Senior Partners and Glorificus. Neither are the Old Ones; or at least some of them anyway. They are Chaos Gods.”_

_“Um, okay?”_

_Cordy heaved a world-weary sort of sigh. “You remember costume guy? Ethan Rayne? We called what he did ‘evil’, but sowing discord and causing craziness isn’t evil so much as it is…”_

_/Right. ‘A spot of fun’, Spike would call it./ “Entertainment.” Buffy sighed heavily. “I get the difference. I wouldn’t before, but I do now. I mean, Spike… A lot of demons…”_

_“Serve, or have served, chaos, not evil. Yeah.” Cordelia nodded approvingly, and her face, if possible, glowed the brighter. “Anyway, you said once, to your new Champion, that it wasn’t really fair that Angel didn’t have to have the visions, just got to act on ‘em…”_

_Buffy threw up a hand. “Wait. My new Champion?”_

_“Hold that thought. See; once Angel turned out to be too much of a gamble paired with you, he screwed up the Acathla thing, and his re-ensoulment got a new codicil, the Powers decided he needed more tempering. Once they managed to drag him away from you, they send him to LA, found him a new conduit. One less tempting…”_

_“That guy. Whatshisname…”_

_A faint, reminiscent smile touched Cordelia’s lips. “Doyle.”_

_Oh, right. Cordy’d kind of had a thing with that dude. “Yeah. And then you.”_

_“Which, you know, worked at first since I wasn’t exactly his type.” She looked Buffy up and down. “You know, not blonde, not deadly…”_

_Buffy frowned. “He turned Drusilla…”_

_“Not cray-cray…”_

_“And you were tough as hell…”_

_“Thanks.” Cordelia smirked. “Honestly, that’s what got him in the end, I think. Between you and me, our boy has a thing where he thinks if someone just, I dunno; takes charge and keeps him out of trouble, he’ll be okay. But that’s neither here nor there. Moving on…”_

_Buffy shuddered. /Yes. Moving on. Please./_

_The screen switched again, to a scene Buffy didn’t recognize. Some tropical-looking place with stucco walls and frondy-things in the background. Spike was there, with Drusilla, and some oozing, antler-y demon hovering around behind and between them, looking deeply uncomfortable, holding a slime-covered beer in one anxious hand as he watched what was clearly a fight in progress. “Why can't you kill her?” Drusilla demanded, looking disappointed, but her eyes flashed dark fire._

_“You're the one who keeps bringin' her up!” _

_Buffy knew that exasperated, overwrought tone. Knew it super well. And she knew that stance, those movements, those gestures and that tight, hurt expression well enough to place everything about this Spike without even having to ask. This was pre-chip Spike. Definitely pre-soul Spike… so, what? Ninety-eight, maybe? Had to be. Didn’t Spike say he and Drusilla had been in something like Brazil, before he’d come back for the Gem? Or was this before, when he’d come up to kidnap Wil and Xander to get a love spell like a dipshit? _

_/Basically right after Acathla, and wow, talk about a linear narrative./_

_“I haven't said a word about the bloody Slayer since we left California. She's on the other side of the planet, Dru!”_

_“But you're lying! I can still see her floating all around you, laughing. Why? Why won't you push her away?”_

_She had seldom seen Spike look so harried. He was clearly at his wits’ end. “But I_ did,_ pet. I did it for you. You keep punishing me. Carrying on with creatures like _this_.”_

_Antler-boy looked decidedly awkward, and more than a little dismayed. Ooze dripped from his horns with greater frequency, as if he were sweating. “Okay, you guys obviously have a thing going on here.”_

_Okay, ugh. She could see trying to make Spike jealous because of the whole already falling for someone else thing, but really? _That_ guy?_

_She was kind of with Spike, there. /I mean, I’m sure antler-boy is very sweet and all, but he looks really… slimy. And not in the ‘used-car salesman’ kind of way./  
  
_ _Drusilla's face went all pinchy. “I have to find my pleasures, Spike. You taste like ashes.”_

_The words struck like a hammer blow. /Oh, God…/ Buffy whirled to Cordelia. “Did you… I mean, did They… Is she…”_

_“She was being used, yes. To divert his path.”_

_Spike was waving his hand at the impotent-looking, antlered demon, all impatience and frustration. “So this is _my_ fault now?”_

_In spite of herself, Buffy savored the reminders of who he had been. A little pang of regret flowed through her for all her guy had lost since this moment, to be with her. He had been… unrestrained. Wild. Just a demon-about-town._

_And yet… If it came to a choice, and letting him go back to that for his own sake so that she had to walk this world without him… /God. Call me a selfish bitch, but I can’t say I’d do it. Even with everything I’ve put him through, I just… I’m sorry, Spike. I need you too bad./_

_“That’s why,” Cordelia said, conversationally, and nodded at the screen. “Watch.”_

_Antler-boy was sort of inching away from them, muttering about not knowing that Drusilla was involved with someone, making his excuses. Spike, dismissive, was telling him to get the hell out and mind his own business. Dru, though, only had eyes for Spike anymore… and they were glittering with menace. But beneath all that Buffy thought she saw a clear terror for her century-long paramour. “You can't blame a girl, Spike. You're all covered with her. I look at you... all I see is the Slayer.”_

_The scene paused again, on Spike’s wounded expression. Buffy frowned, wondering what she was supposed to take from that. “So, what? She saw it. She’s always seen it. We’re pretty sure she was a Slayer, or at last a Potential, when she was turned, which is why she has all those visions; and also, as a side-note, if people would’ve just told me I was part-demon and that’s why I have all these visions, I’d’ve been a lot happier with myself over the years. Just saying…”_

_Cordelia just smiled sagely. “No comment on Elvira over there. And the thing with you? Not my call. You know I wasn’t this back then.” She gestured up and down her glowing body to indicate her change of status. “Anyway… what you’re supposed to take from this… hint hint… If Elvampra was once a conduit for Us… Then even if part of her belongs to the Gods of Chaos now, part of her is still Our conduit. The messages get purposely garbled sometimes, because she’s getting two signals at once, and they’re sometimes totally at cross-purposes. Like…”_

_“When you’re in between cities,” Buffy interrupted, finally getting it. “…And a new station’s coming in, so one’s going all fuzzy. And one’s Country, and one’s Hip-Hop, and you have no idea what the hell you’re hearing, and when you try to sing along, you’re doing a word from one and a word from the other, and they’re all mixed up…”_

_Cordelia smiled broadly at her as if Buffy had just won the gold star for the day. “See, and here I thought you were the slow kid, Buffy. Look at you. Thank goodness you’re where you’re at, incidentally, giving me this little look-see. The white-hats don’t usually have a plant in the black-hat office. The view you’re giving me is gonna have the head-office buzzing with 411 for days. The weapons we’ve got now to take down those jerks…”_

_“Oh. Really?”_

_“Seriously. Loud and clear intelligence like this is priceless. Seriously stellar. I mean, if we did it on purpose we’d be… Well, gray hats. But that would kind of smudge up the system, right? But since you went and volunteered to do it for us…”_

_Buffy frowned. “Are you saying I’m a gray hat now?”_

_Cordy tilted her head slightly, and her eyes blurred. “You’re… a bridge. And you’re very necessary. But let’s put that aside right now. Get back to the program.”_

_Talk about some food for thought. “So… the Powers were using Drusilla…”_

_“Yeah. You were sans Champion. We needed to send a message. Break the new guy loose; package him up and send him to you, because he was ripe. He already had a thing for you, he'd already stepped in once and done the other guy's job by accident with the Acathla deal. And since Champion Numero Uno didn’t work out so well…”_

_Buffy's head started to reel._

_Cordy held up a hand, interrupting her shocked whirl. “Wait. They say you skated. Okay. You tried out a partner, and he ended up not being able to handle the lifts, so they sent you a new guy. He looked tiny, but he’s stronger than he seems, and in the end he can do all the heavy lifting. He may have been a hockey-player for longer, but he’s a fast learner…”_

_It was impossible. Insane. “They sent Spike because… Because They knew I’d want him? Or what, because They knew I’d need him? To be a… My Champion?”_

**TBC...with the conclusion!  
**


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so here we are... Finally wrapping up this monster of a story. I'd originally calculated something closer to fifty chapters, but I was going off of a more like 7-9k-per-chapter model (counting them by estimating how many pages of my document sort of made up that many thousands of words, since this thing was in no way organized in anything like conventional chapters)... but then at some point I obviously just gave in and started putting it out at whatever length made sense for decent ending moments, whether they were 11k or not... and here we are.
> 
> Oh. There's one more (really massive, if brief) **Major Character Death** in here, and some dialogue from whatever AtS episode that was where Angel gets the Amulet from Lilah, but I can't even remember what it's called right now. Probably "Home".
> 
> I could not possibly be more grateful to all of you who actually followed me in this massive jaunt through what I know is, to many, uncomfortably unusual terrain, considering most fics don't plunge past that battle in the alley and follow Spuffy into the canon aftermath, but somehow try to avoid it. I personally really came to enjoy, if not fall in love with, this setting, and the concept of these two randomly using this bizarre time away from their normal reality to really step back and assess all the good and bad of their previous relationship, decide what blocks to use to build a foundation and which ones to jettison, and to decide what they wanted to create with each other without the strain of dealing with the remains of the Scoobies, etc before they moved forward, completely solid and committed. 
> 
> I don't think I really expected how well it turned out, any more than maybe y'all did, relationship-wise, but then most of the stuff I write is as much a surprise for me as it is for you folks, lol. When I write, I only know the big beats till I get there. All the little dialogue and character emotion moments are just as big a shock to me as they are to everyone else, :-D. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for coming along for the ride! ** If you wanna join me for the next segment of tale, there'll be info on that in the post-chapter notes.**

_**CON'T from:  
**It was impossible. Insane. “They sent Spike because… Because They knew I’d want him? Or what, because They knew I’d need him? To be a… My Champion?”  
  
“Right hand guy? Except, left-hand?" Cordy offered a little shrug. "All of the above. Except… ‘sent’ is a strong word. Think of it more as… ‘nudged’, or maybe ‘encouraged’.”_

_“Huh?” Buffy wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. It didn’t really match up with her concept of the Powers the way Wil had described them. “Don’t They just… make things happen they way They, like, see fit?”_

_Cordelia shrugged. “Kinda, but at the same time, not.” At Buffy’s probably bewildered expression, “Look, Buffy, here’s the thing. There are a kajillion threads needing to be pulled. And, not everyone’s under the Powers’ sphere of influence." Her hazel eyes went sharp, incisive as swords. "Slayers aren’t exactly automatically Their ballgame, any more than a rando vampire with a soul would be…”_

_Buffy flung up one hand to call a halt to the proceedings. “Wait. _Excuse_ me? I’m not… I mean… I don’t belong to the Powers? Like, as their… tool or whatever?”_

_She was immediately startled by Cordy’s hardcore, sarcastic scoff. “Oh,_ please,_ Buffy. That was such a straight-up, human-only side-job, done totally off the cuff and pulled off right under Their noses while They were off looking the other way. The Powers were busy worrying about tussling with a bunch of Old Ones for much higher stakes on the chessboard right about then. You think they cared about what humans were up to at that point? We were small fry. They didn't give a damn whether an upstart race of high-class, hairless apes even survived."_

_/Okay, wow. I thought... big battle for souls, and.../ Of course, that had all been in what Buffy realized now was a completely human-centric textbook, written to keep the Slayers invested in their Calling, but still. The idea that humans hadn't always been the turning-point species in the Powers' war against the Old Ones and their vampire and purer demon offspring was... It was..._

_"Sure, we had the potential to be major players someday," Cordy went on, almost meditatively, "if we could manage to last, but at that point... Or, heck; when you think about it, even now, we have just as much of a break-even chance to become, like, tools for the bad dudes." A quick flash of a terrifyingly bright, Cordelia grin in her direction, merciless as Buffy had ever seen it. "Which ended up playing in our favor, of course. But till later, They were barely paying attention to us. Which is why those guys got away with what they did to that poor girl. It was every human for themselves. When those Shadowmen made the First Slayer…" A little castaway shrug. "That was way a Chaos Gods Special, Buffy. Just throw something new into the works, mix it all up, see what came out. And it really screwed things up for everyone; Old Ones, Powers, the whole shebang. Which is totally why the Gods of Chaos had any buy-in, when you think about it. They always love to stir the pot.”_

_Buffy felt everything in her fall into flux. Her beliefs, her sense of self and identity; all of it. Because her only understanding, really, of these so-called Gods of Chaos was her brief, repeated run-ins with Ethan Rayne. Talk about meetings which did not inspire confidence when it came to a suggested alignment. “Slayers are… We belong to… To _Chaos?”

_Cordy actually snorted, indelicately. “Don't freak, Buffy, jeez. Consider it a matter of choice. You can do whatever you want; that's the point of Chaos. I know you're not all, you know, mythology-girl like your guy, there, but maybe you should hit him up for a primer once we wake up from this little sidebar. Even the big, key guys like Loki and Coyote and Raven and Hermes and... Well, anyway, all those guys end up doing good as often as they make a mess of things, depending on what's happening that day. Sometimes it's a dice-roll. Sometimes it's up to how they felt that day. But there's a time and a place for Chaos, and mostly it's about evening up the odds. You need a little gray in the world when there's so much that's an extreme." She shook her head a little then, looking, if possible, slightly regretful. "Okay, look. I shouldn't say this, and I'll probably get in trouble for it. Obviously I work for the one side, now... but even I'll admit that we take things too far sometimes. I mean, Jasmine was a force for Good, but her idea of Good was..." A full-body shudder. "Anyway. Less said about that, the better."_

_Buffy frowned. "I guess I don't wanna know."_

_Cordelia's lips went tight, her entire expression darkening. "You definitely don't. Let's just leave it at that the two big sides basically want to knock the other off. But sometimes swinging too far on the pendulum isn't necessarily the best course of action." A brief pause. "Like, okay. Think of it this way, Buffy. If there was no limbo space in between, where would_ you_ be? Where would your guy be? Or mine?"_

_Buffy had no answer to that. God knew she had long since given up on that whole good/bad, Slayers-are-for-anti-demon-genocide party-line. She just hadn't really thought it all the way through to the conclusion Cordelia was now posing; that said party-line might come from on high, and that if one was to oppose it, it might mean…_

_/Maybe playing for either team isn't necessarily the best idea anymore. Maybe… Maybe sometimes it's not necessarily wrong to be on your own team./_

_It felt like heresy to even think it. It felt dangerous. It felt like turning into Faith. Except… /What Faith was… What she started out as… Before she fell into badness; was she just being… chaotic? Was she just being a Slayer on the loose, and then kinda… tripped?/_

_Dangerous thoughts.  
  
"Anyway, moving on. Slayers. Originally a Chaos move. But, you know…" Another indifferent little shrug, made around the katana on her shoulder. "But the humans—or I guess I should say, the Slayer Line—got the Powers’ attention pretty damn quick once Sineya started to make a dent by knocking off Maloker’s Turok-Han left and right…"_

_Buffy would like to say she was shocked at that mental picture, except she wasn't, really. Sineya was always a bit more demon than human. The idea of the First Slayer taking on a Turok-Han with her bare hands and ripping its head off, probably with her teeth, didn't seem all that farfetched._

_"…Because once that strain started to fail in its extermination task, Archaeus came in and doubled down. He retaliated by inventing a whole new strain of vamp." Cordy lifted her eyebrow at Buffy, pointed. "Bet you can guess what his countermove was. It was something we all know and love to this day…"  
  
/Oh. Oh, man. The whole 'human guise' thing. Oh, jeez./_

_"Yeah. Exactly. He invented this a whole new breed of stealth vampires so he could sneak 'em into the human camp under the Slayer's noses. And it worked, for a while. The new model was uber-successful. For one, they bred with humans so often and all that, that they actually started to out-compete the original vamps right into extinction. Not to mention that the humans were in serious trouble…"_

_Buffy could only imagine how terrifying that must have been. Like in that _Terminator_ movie, when all the sudden there were these stealth killers showing up in your midst, randomly slaughtering everyone left and right while wearing human faces, or just flat-out replacing people you loved between one night and the next._

_"…Except… the Slayers were still holding their own. It was this crazy back-and-forth battle for dominion over the earth. Imagine it, Buffy. The Old Ones thought humanity were players enough all the sudden, if only just by our numbers, to come after us like that—probably because they didn't want us to out-compete their demons for resources—but if the Old Ones were all over us like that..." She tilted her head a little, still faintly amused. "That meant obviously the Powers needed to start paying attention to us. That little skirmish down here? It got their attention hardcore." She smiled another one of those fierce, merciless smiles. "Especially the tool. The Slayer. Because talk about a power worth grabbing onto and using.”_

_Buffy needed something to sit down on. She felt behind her, but of course there was nothing. Only sand, the occasional creosote bush. Some mesquite. _

_Cordy wasn’t done with her, of course. She kept up her ferocious verbal pummeling. “I'm not sure why you're surprised by all this. Seriously, Buffy. Use your head. Why do you think it’s always so easy for Slayers to fall off the deep end into chaos? Why you’re so much like vamps? It's because you were made by the same set of powers! I mean…” Another heavy scoff. “Why do you think the Watchers Council always kept such a tight hold on you? They’ll tell you it’s because you have evil in you, and if you let loose even one notch, you’ll become what you fight; but really its that you’re a tool of Chaos… and if you’re not being run by the good guys, just anyone could snap you up. And that’s what scares them. Them… _and_ us. Because you’ve been kept in the dark for millennia, and those tweedy old jerks don’t think they can count on you to make an educated choice.”_

_Buffy had no idea how to respond. It was seriously like someone had torn the desert floor out from under her feet. If she wasn't in the dream, she would probably be hyperventilating. “So…” she began again, shaken, “so then why pair me with… With a vampire, if…”_

_Cordelia’s expression softened from snarky to thoughtful. “The Powers know Slayers, Buffy. Whether you belong to Them or no, They’ve definitely been using you this whole time. I mean, why not? You’re hella useful. And more than that, They know how you tick. You have a seriously lonely demon in you that’s never had a partner. That’s just been worked to death without rest for thousands of years; alone, without companionship or solace. They’ve been banking on that, starting with Angel. They hit pay dirt the second time around, with the guy who’s too stubborn to give up; who loves for all the right reasons.”_

_/Oh, wow./ God knew that was true._

_“But you had to break each other in, first, since you were both with the major trauma and the serious issues and the not really willing and all that crap." Cordy rolled her eyes insultingly. "Took you two forever to get with the program. You were just getting it—and by the way, headaches upstairs for days over you two—before that finally started working right, since you and Angel screwed everything up in the interim with that damn half a claim, and all this other extraneous…” She waved a hand, exhaled an exasperated sigh. “So much bullying. You have no idea. Of course, despite all that, it turned out to be the right way to go. Angel was doing a hell of a lot better in his new arrangement.” All the sudden, her lips went all hard and flat. “You know, till he and I got too close and they decided we had to be separated.” She frowned censoriously. “Some people can apparently be Conduit and Champion and have all the fun, and some people can’t, which, whatever.”_

_Buffy was on a whole other tack, too pissed off anymore to be all that sympathetic to Cordy and Angel’s truncated love affair. “Did you have to put a _chip_ in Spike’s head, and drive us to half-kill each other, and the soul thing, and…” She was incensed. “Do you know that they put that thing in his head without _anesthesia?_ Do you know what it did to him to…”_

_Cordy held up a hand, flinching slightly. “A, some things are just straight up humans being dicks, Buffy. Remember. Chaos-species in general. B, if it _was_ us… totally not my call. Still human then myself, remember?” A brief, pensive pause. “Or, you know, whatever.”_

_Buffy reined herself in with an effort. Did some deep-breathing of the arid, desert air to clear her head. “Okay, sorry. My bad. I get it, it’s just…” Her head jerked up and she narrowed her eyes at Cordelia. “Wait. What do you mean, ‘or whatever’?”_

_Cordy shrugged. “There’s a reason I was able to transition to part-demon so easy. And to be fair, Sunnydale native. Hellmouth. Different generation than Amanda.” A little, tight smile. “Angel really has a type, you know. Me, you, Drusilla. Hell, for all I know, _Darla_ was...”_

_Buffy gasped, pulling back a little. “You were a Potential?”_

_Cordy shrugged. “Apex cheerleader four years running; sass for days since birth. Which, for the record, that was the one time you beat me out as prom queen. I mean, seriously. I was the local girl, and you came in from out of town and stole it.” Another faint, Mona Lisa smile. “But I’m not mad. Even if I ended up in a coma when you turned everyone else on.”_

_“Oh, God.” She should’ve guessed. Should’ve recognized it. No wonder she and Cordy had hated each other on sight. Slayerhood was an instinctive rivalry. Slayers and their more precocious get were nothing if not territorial predators. “So how come when you were… elevated, you didn’t just…”_

_“C’mon, you think they wanted another one around? You and Faith were plenty. They… changed things up a little. Neutered me somehow, just woke up enough parts of me to make me all Conduit-y without giving me the charge and the fight-y powers." She looked away then, with a faint, sharp exhale. "But in the end that’s why I ended up here. I was upsetting the balance. They had to let the whole thing with Jasmine go down, bring me skyward, or I’d’ve thrown off the whole system.” She eyed Buffy solemnly, dark eyes incisive. “Not that you and Willow didn’t end up doing that anyway like a few months later.”_

_“I’m sorry, Cordy.” She really was._

_Cordelia shrugged. “It is what it is.” She pushed it all away with a clear and obvious effort. “Anyway, moving on. We’re running out of time, even in this little time-out-of-time bubble I have going, here. So. You had your new Champion—reluctant and stubborn, but on site and adapting—I had mine. I was falling apart, but you know. That's life as an unsuccessful experiment. Meanwhile, love had totally reformed yours from agent of Chaos to white hat. then, I ascended—or thought I did—and without his direct Conduit around, Angel fell apart and lost the mission. He fell back under the sway of the Senior Partners and started getting yanked around by them." Her lips tightened again, formidable and pissed off. "They’ve always had skin in the game, and they've always wanted to use him too." _

_“Man. Everyone always wants a piece of Angel, don’t they?”_

_Cordy made a sound that might have been a ghost of a snarky laugh. “Well, you know. He’s useful. Totally a handy tool. If you turn him one way or the other, he’s a strong weapon for either side. He’s a rare breed of vamp in that he never really belonged to Chaos. He’s either dark or light, so…”_

_“Oh, jeez…” On some level, Buffy was distantly aware that she had a dying Angel lying on her thighs, bubbling his last breaths. Just the thought that he, as a vessel for a cursed soul and a maddened one, was in a state of constant tug-of-war between the Powers and the Partners was awful. “No wonder he just wants a break.”_

_“Yeah. I wish he could have it. It’s not time yet, but… someday.”_

_Buffy stared at the glowing figure. “It’s not…”_

_“Hold that thought.” Cordy waved a hand at the screen again. An image of Conner wavered into view, static and odd. He didn’t look the same at all. He had a sneer on his face, a sword in his hand, and seemed filled with rage. Behind him, fading out, was a very cute baby. Cordelia’s expression, when Buffy turned back, had turned to a sort of wistful regret. “He was such a sweet little thing. But They used him. Hellgods, the Partners, everyone. Chaos, even. The worst part is, they didn't even use him for his own good or ill. They totally just made him to use him against Angel. Like, it was almost the only reason that poor kid existed at all. I_ hate_ that." The hard stance wilted briefly, and Cordelia's expression floundered into regret, sadness, pain. "I loved that little guy. Seriously loved him. He really deserves better."_

_Buffy didn't want to think about it. She didn't want to think about the kid who, maybe only a year older than Dawn, if that, lay dead a little ways away from her on the Hyperion floor, having gasped his last in his father's arms a few short minutes ago.  
  
"But they did. They wielded him like a weapon against his father. Got him to splinter the mission, while I was away. Angel doesn’t care about anything else anymore. Now it’s ‘protect Conner above all else’. Which makes sense, I guess. More than anyone, Connor’s the love of his life, and that’s never gonna change.”_

_/Well, obviously./ Buffy closed her eyes. It sounded like that boy had only really started living in the past few months. Angel had apparently sold everyone and everything trying to buy him a life, free and clear… and now he was gone. Dead, destroyed by the resentment of one of the many who had been sold into bondage to buy his way clear. And his loss had destroyed everything Angel had had left.   
  
She got that. If Dawn… _

/When_ Dawn…_/

_It had been her first break with ‘the mission is everything’. Her first break with Giles, with ‘the Slayer is me and I am the Slayer’, a charge she had accepted when she had chosen to die at the hands of the Master at sixteen.   
  
No. Some things you don’t ask of a person, and one of them is sacrificing a child. “I get that,” she whispered softly. “When it comes to… outliving your kid… No. The mission can go to hell.”_

_“Yeah,” Cordy answered quietly. “We didn’t bank on Connor. Heck, we barely banked on Dawn… which, by the way, just to let you know, none of us banked on Willow bringing you back. That was Chaos. Witches belong to Chaos, not us, no matter how much they switch around. It’s just what they do, the choices they make in how to use their gifts that determine which side they land on. You being back here actually kind of messed things up, because we figured you’d earned the break. _So_ not our call…”_

_Buffy nodded. Breathed a little, let some of the little flecks of agony and rage chip away._

_“All the cards were off the table once that happened. But yeah, if you were back, we were gonna use you again. Not because we wanted to, but because if the Powers have a Conduit in place, they kinda have to, you know?”_

_“Hm.” Sometimes she really, really wanted to punch Willow. Even now, to this day. Wrath-agony made her shake, even if she had mostly come to terms with it. Even if it had gotten her Spike, bought them time to come together and work things out. “Bet Faith had a lot of extra-special dreams while I was floating around in heaven.”_

_“She was being prepped to take over, yeah. They had to work double-time, since Chaos really had a ride on her. She was a slow side-project till then, bringing her back around. Lucky; that little jaunt paid off later, when they had to bring her back over to work side-by-side with you. You’re a territorial bunch, Slayers.”_

_Buffy grunted. Then something occurred to her. “Wait. Does Faith get a… Champion someday?”_

_That questioned earned her a little Cordelia head-shake. “They’ll all be a little better off since you’ve chilled the Line out by giving it a companion. You’ve resolved that… That yearning. That ancient loneliness. It’ll help keep them all sane…” _

_It had never really occurred to Buffy to think of it that way, but she supposed, in a creepy, bizarre way, none of them really had their own, separate demon. They all shared the same essence, all spread out across what had once been two and was now a couple hundred girls. Which was… kinda ew. Like being a joint organism, or the… what was that thing they had talked about in Dr. Gregory’s class, may he rest in peace? The protoplasm foot or whatever, of one huge spiritual amoeba-thing. _

_They all shared the same experiences, from the demon-side, even if they all had different human lives. And their human experiences were all saved into the memory of that collective soul as well, to be parsed by all the rest in the language of dreams, and used for future combat experience, and, just…_

_/No way I’m gonna think about that too much, if it means that all future Slayers are gonna remember, on some level, sleeping with Spike. Because, just, ugh. Talk about invasive!/_

_“But you’re the main conduit for the… species,” Cordelia went on, quietly certain. “The point-person. If you go down, she’ll get one. And on down the line.”_

_Okay, but even with all the… the amoeba stuff, how did _that_ make sense? “Even though she’s the official holder of the…”_

_“Long story. There’s this clingy thing that happens with the dying and the resurrection and the finally-not-being-alone. You have a kind of double-investiture.” Cordy eyed her with full-on Queen C satire in her eyes. “Why’d you think the First Evil was so hung up on you?”_

_“Ooookay…” Buffy frowned. “And while I’ve been here, all not-Conduit-girl…”_

_“You got to play Champion while Spike took over some of your duties.”_

_Buffy nodded, because it really just slotted in with some of what she’d been thinking. It made sense on a seriously instinctive level. “I kinda thought. It’s been… nice.”_

_“You needed the break. Being brought back by Chaos…” Cordy sighed, looking her up and down. “It did a number on you. Damaged you pretty bad. Not to mention, it got your mojo up to a factor of about… Well.” She narrowed her eyes, as if assessing something. “Okay. Potentials are at about a sixteenth power. Not enough to buffer the visions, for instance.” A candid glance from the woman who had been slowly eaten away by the same affliction. “When you get Called you’re at, oh, one-eighth demon. You got offed by the Master and went up to a quarter right then. But that thing with Glorificus totally brought you up to about half-and-half…”_

_“Seriously?”_

_“No joke. Maybe just shy; the math isn’t exact or anything, since it’s not like, a blood-quantum. The ‘infusion’ thing makes it a little more iffy. And anyway, it’s not like some sort of cosmic scale; you know, ‘human gets off here, demon gets on’. It’s more a kind of… accretion. When you got Called, your human life, or the Potential of it, essentially died right then. It got killed by the Line rushing in to take you over. So really, the Master was kind of your second death…” _

_/Another thing we have in common with vampires, in a way, then./_

_“…Potential Slayer, Potential human; halvsies. Then, each time you came back from the grave and into the line it was a voluntary choice to… I don’t know how to say this, but I guess grab hold of more of the power of the demon to hang on, because you were just not gonna go quietly, does that make sense? It wasn’t yours anymore. It was Kendra’s, but dammit, you weren’t done… and the Line, the demonic essence was… more familiar with you, so it split to accommodate you. It got stronger to keep you in it, and in doing so, it weakened the younger Slayer…”_

_/Oh, God. Me coming back actually weakened Kendra? And Faith? That’s why she’s not as strong as me? Because I…/_

_“Then they brought you back. That time it wasn’t your choice. You were done. But you got dragged back, and the essence said, ‘Oh. Alright. I know this one. I want this one.’ And it took back some of what it was giving back, finally, to the Line. When you think of it, Faith and the rest have plenty of reason to resent you, really… and the fact that you’ve given them something back only negates that to the extent that you’ve… reversed the way the Line works. It’s allowed to live in many instead of just one. It’s not restricted to live or die in just one girl anymore. It’s already adjusted to that concept, so it was able to adapt, but it’s also had to learn how to be spread a little thin. To bulk up. But they’re never gonna be as strong as you and Faith, the number one and the number two.” Cordy shrugged. “If Willow hadn’t been there to keep you above the surface when you got shot, you’d be at about five-eighths demon right now. Faith… She’s at Slayer-standard, just with, you know, experience and a little Chaos-energy to pump her up. The rest…”_

_“Sub-par. Till I finally die.”_

_“Which is gonna be a minute.”_

_Buffy kind of felt like sitting down right now. “A minute?”_

_“I don’t really think it wants to let you go by now. If you weren’t the Chosen One before, you’re seriously the way Chosen One now.” Cordy was looking at her with some serious empathy at this point. “The Council had it wrong. You aren’t a side-note. They sent Wes to help out because Faith was supposedly the true Slayer, and she was going sideways without support… but also to study you, because they couldn’t figure out why you even existed. You were supposed to just die, you know, if another Slayer was activated. Like, you know, the other one was supposed to sponge up all the Line’s energy and you were supposed to just flop over like a boned fish and, _poof_. Over and out. Instead both of you were animated with the Calling. It didn’t make sense to them that the demon could fill up both of you, you know? It should’ve just bailed out of you to fill Kendra up. Left you to die.”_

_/Oh, wow./ She had never thought…_

_“You ever ask yourself why they’d pay so much attention to a Slayer who wasn’t supposed to be their main girl anymore?”_

_/Well… shoot./_

_“And you were, you know, consorting with vampires, being too much like everything they feared. Demon-girl, not controllable Slayer-girl…”_

_/Oh. Damn./ _

_“Ever ask yourself why they’d try to kill you off, even though you weren’t the one going off half-cocked?”_

_"Oh, man.” The Cruciamentum. Faith had never had to… Even though she was older.   
  
Buffy had always thought it was because her sister-Slayer had been Called right around her eighteenth birthday, but if, instead, it was because they didn't consider her a threat..._

_“Anyway,” Cordy went on, turning back to the screen, “you were a wild card. But then Faith went off—and why her, when you were the screwy one?—so they had to deal with you. And then you took over and told them to go screw themselves. Then you died, and they were like, ‘Yay! No more loose ends!’. Imagine their freakout when you came back, in their minds acting even more wiggy and totally demonic…”_

_Right. The Council were probably having serious kittens by then. Course, she’d scared them so bad during the Glory thing that they were probably plotting from afar at that point. Maybe planning to take her out with a nuclear device or something._

_“And just when they were about to try to figure out what to do about you, they got blown to smithereens…”_

_/Which, thank God, considering. Or, thank The First./ Not that she ever wanted to thank The First for anything, really, but dealing with the Council’s machinations on top of the First Evil would have been a bit much right about then. Giles had been plenty, with his whole being all flipped out about Spike and everything. /And you know what? Maybe that makes more sense now, if he had freaked out Council reps whispering in his ear about… stuff./_

_“You were damaged enough by death and returning from it, and dealing with your new intermix…”_

_/Understatement of all time…/_

_“Not really in the best place as Conduit… which, let me tell you. Getting messages through to you during that period? Not of the fun.”_

_Now that Cordy mentioned it, Buffy had not been much with the Slayer-dreams during that whole thing. Mostly it had been nightmares about climbing from her grave, and insane, formless, chaotic, emotional sex-dreams, and violent ones, and… “Oh! I was having…”_

_“Demon dreams, yes. You were getting in touch with your other side.” Brown eyes twinkled knowingly at her. “In more ways than one, huh?”_

_“Okay, you know what? Shut up.”_

_“Hey. Not my business. Anyway, it seems to have worked out okay for you, huh?”_

_Buffy crossed her arms, but felt a little smile touch her lips in spite of herself. “Actually? Yeah, it has.” She still felt a little belligerent about it, but yes. Fine. Stupid, smug Powers._

_It was just… /Could the ride have been a little easier? On either of us?/_

_As if she could read her mind, Cordelia eyed her sadly. “It was necessary, Buffy. He needed to be pushed. You both did. You’d hit a wall. You weren’t being a Conduit anymore… and because of that, you weren’t letting him be your Champion. So…”_

_That was it. She snapped. “So you guys drove him to go get the stupid soul to snap me back to my senses? How is _that_ fair?”_

_“It reconnected you; to each other, to the mission.” Cordelia sighed and lifted the sword to ground it in the sand. “Fair’s not important. We’re in a_ war,_ Buffy.” She nodded at the screen. “Angel was losing ground. You _had_ to win.”_

_The screen snapped back on, and a montage of scenes went by; Angel underwater in some kind of box or something, trapped. Angel… No. Angelus, again, fighting Faith. _

_Angel, alone, lost, without Cordelia, without Connor. He stood in a glistening and unbroken Wolfram and Hart office with some lawyer-looking woman, making some kind of deal with the devil.  
  
He held the amulet in one hand, a file in the other. “Sunnydale.”_

_“That nifty, little bauble comes with the file. Apparently, it's crucial for some kind of final battle. Guess they're in short supply up Sunnydale way. A bit gauche for my taste, but, hey, not a Slayer.”_

_/Oh. It was meant for _me_. To get me out of the way. Or…/_

_/Or the Powers meant for him to wear it in my stead, because they knew that if he had the chance, he’d put it on for me. And they’d want him out of the way if it meant keeping him out of the Partners’ hands./ Buffy closed her eyes as the realization ricocheted through her. _

_/It was my time again. Mine or his. And instead, I put it on Spike. It was _me_. I…/_

_“Buffy can handle herself.”_

_/Oh God…/_

_“But isn't it more fun when you handle her?”_

_The double entendre was apparent, bridling. But there was more to it than that. This woman, or the Partners or whoever were throwing this at Angel, knew one thing. Somewhere inside him, he’d always wanted to stand in front of her. Protect her. Fall back into old patterns and be the Champion to her Conduit. Be…_

_/Oh damn… Did that woman even know who she was working for?/_

_“Keep the intel. Not interested.” Angel was starting for the door. Buffy was too in a whirl of emotions and thoughts to pay attention to much of the conversation; especially since she didn’t know half of what the rest was about. Something about cases and homicides and missing persons, but she did notice when the woman hooked Angel again. When she brought Cordy and Conner back into the conversation. _

_“…About where Cordelia and your son are? Not a thing, but you could find out in about ten seconds. All you gotta do is pick up the phone, boss.” She lifted said device, handed it to Angel, eyebrows raised expectantly._

_Angel clearly had to fight temptation in that moment… but he did it. Put the phone back down. “I’m sorry about what happened to you, Lilah. I really am.” Steeled himself visibly. “Me and my friends will be leaving now.”_

_/Oh, man./ His desperate yearning damn near broke Buffy just watching it. _

_The phone rang. The brunette answered it, arresting Angel, who sighed. “Yes?” the woman asked. “Of course.” She set it back on the hook and turned to Angel all pleasantly. “The Senior Partners would like you to test all the amenities before you make your decision.” And she used a remote to turn on a TV in a cupboard in the wall. _

_“Cool!” Angel snarked. “Is that high-def?”_

_It pained Buffy now to see the bravado from a once-desperate man now dying on her lap._

_A news report was flashing by on the TV, talking about bomb squads and evacuations, police and hostages. They flashed a picture of a slightly younger, seriously desperate-looking Connor, which, wow._

_Of course, at that, Angel moved closer to the screen. No doubt he couldn’t help it. _

_“Wow, really does have your eyes, doesn't he?” the lawyer-bitch pointed out, sounding amused._

_Back in the Slayer-vision, the big screen faded to black. _

_“So… that’s how they got him, huh?” Buffy asked softly. “He made the deal to run Wolfram and Hart to save Connor?”_

_Cordelia nodded sadly. Turned to Buffy. “And since you were back on an even keel—more or less—and since Angel was totally adrift, stuck like a fly in sap in a place where they couldn’t send me or any real guides anymore, they decided to send him another Warrior of Light. One the Partners would let through because he’d slip under their radar. He’d read as Chaos. As split figures. As someone they could manipulate, like Angel. But with you in his mind and in his blood, he’d be immovable.”_

_“What are you…” _

_“Since, without a Conduit Angel could so easily be tipped over to the dark side, the Powers decided they needed your Champ more with him for the moment. So they split you up. Sent your boy over to straighten out his sire." Cordy looked briefly away, but Buffy could see the pained tightness around her eyes despite. "I couldn’t get in. Not where he was. I was on indefinite hiatus, so They needed an un-conflicted rep inside the enemy camp. And Spike was, after all, solidly on our side by then, so why not give him a good, serious test-drive by giving LA a slightly more dependable Champion…”_

_“No, no; hold up.” Buffy was quite literally incapable of dealing with this information at this specific instant. “Are you actually telling me that the Powers That Be took _my_ guy, took _my_ Spike, _away_ from me, and gave him to _Angel_ to straighten him _out_, because he had strayed from his mission? That _They’re_ the reason he got… nudged into staying here so damn long when I was over there _dying_, missing him. Believing he was _dead?”

_“Um, don’t shoot the messenger?”_

_Buffy turned away from Cordelia. Walked four precise paces away from the glowing figure of the former cheerleader. And punched a hole right through the stupid magical movie screen._

_Of course, it promptly healed right up around her fist when she pulled it out. Stupid, unsatisfying destruction-that-wasn’t. _

_Quivering with rage, she pondered wrecking a few boulders. You know, with her bare hands. When she thought of all the months apart… Of what it had _done_ to her, of what it had nearly done to _Spike_… “Has it even occurred to these Powers assholes,” she demanded through clenched teeth, “even a _little_, that we’re not just, whaddaya call it? Pawns on a chessboard that they can do whatever they want with?”_

_“Not even a little bit.”_

_Buffy whirled back to Cordelia. “Doesn’t that _bother_ you? I mean, they did it to _you_, too!”_

_Cordy shrugged. “You’d have to see it from the perspective I’ve gained. This battle… Ends justifying means and all that.”_

_"You can’t be _serious_.”_

_“I’m sorry, but… If you’ve seen what I have… yes.”_

_Buffy breathed through her nose and wondered if it would accomplish anything at all to punch Cordelia. Probably her fists would just go right through the glowy bitch. “That’s way beyond the realm of the uber messed-up.”_

_Cordy, of course, just went on looking sympathetic. “Again, really not my idea. And I did tell them it probably wouldn’t work. For one thing, the boys don’t exactly have the best relationship…”_

_Wrath was still the main emotion at work, here, along with withering dismay. “Can we say duh?”_

_“If it helps any, it did work, if not exactly in the way They planned. For one, they didn’t count on how separating a perfectly-suited Champion and Conduit would damage both of you… even though they’d already done it with me and Angel. Already screwed up my Champ. But then…” She sighed heavily. “They’re kind of shortsighted about Chaos Magick, so They also hadn’t counted on your guy having made a blood-oath to you before They borrowed him from you, which complicated things a little…”_

_“Excuse me?”_

_Cordelia’s voice went dry. “Oh, c'mon, be serious. How many times, Buffy, did you draw blood from Spike, only to have him declare his love and devotion to you? You do know how that works, right? He handed you the leash to his being probably a hundred times. You _own_ him. Of course he’s wanted to buy something back, here, close the circle. To had you admit out loud that you wanted him so that he’d feel like you were actually holding the leash instead of just letting it drag on the ground. If there’s one thing a vampire can’t handle, it’s being clipped and then just left to dangle. It’s like a wolf living in captivity, being collared and then just turned loose again in the woods. He can’t go back to being wild, so he just has to hang around on the edges of human civilization, praying someone cares enough to feed him scraps so he can survive.”_

_/She’s talking about minion stuff. Oh my God./ Buffy closed her eyes. “And until that last few days, I wouldn’t even say I wanted him there, much less feed him…” /No wonder he bit the hand that sometimes acted like it was going to pet or feed, but just mostly just beat him a lot./_

_“But now you will. It’s everything he ever wanted. Or…” Cordelia waved a hand vaguely. “Mostly. But you’ll figure that out later. Anyway…” She nodded at the screen. “He was here, with his nest-sire. Lots of bad blood. Didn’t belong anymore, really. Angelus was bound, in hiding. Angel didn’t really want him since he was a bad reminder of a lot of mistakes. Tough way to relate, since neither of them had ever really associated on that level before. Made for good closure for both of them in a way, if they could figure out how to take it, but with you between them…”_

_Buffy made a face. “Been there, seen that, have the videotape.”_

_“Yeah, well. Vamps get nibbly with a girl, they can’t help being territorial, even when it’s been over for a while. It’s a thing.”_

_“Thanks for the newsflash.” She shot a glance at Cordy. “Doesn’t this even bug you? I mean, Angel and you…”_

_Cordelia just smiled all patiently. “I know everything about Angel. What makes him tick. I’ve seen him fight his dark side with his soul right there. I know who he is, know how hard he struggles. That’s why I love him. Not because he’s perfect, but because he tries. Even when he fails." A little, philosophical shrug. "I’ve seen him lock lawyers in a room with Darla and Drusilla and let them feed, watched him hit rock-bottom with his ex and try to lose the soul, because he knew himself and he was so damn tired that he wanted to give up the fight.” Her eyes glittered fiercely at Buffy. “But you know what? He came back from all of that, just to try to make a difference. He came back for us. For his friends.” She tilted her head just slightly, and that smile turned into something glowing. “You could say he came back for me. So yeah. I know who he is. I know his past, his present, his future... and I still love him." The smile actually managed to widen, grew into something blinding; like the one Angel had worn when he had first seen her glowing descent to clothe Buffy's body. "I love everything about him. The good, the bad, the ugly.” Then the smile faded, and dream-darkened eyes focused on Buffy, incisive. “You never really did, did you?”_

_Cordy had her there, because that recitation? /Those are all parts of Angel I never knew; and if I had known, they would have turned me away so fast…/ “No,” Buffy admitted softly. “That’s me and Spike.” /And that’s the thing right there, isn’t it. I’m not sure how… How it’s different, but it is. Maybe it’s about expectations or something, but… Spike impresses me. Angel… lets me down. Is that awful?/ She was glad for Angel that he had found someone who saw his failings as something to praise in him, to cheerlead; to tell him he could still strive. /I could never do that for him./ _

_Turning resolutely back to the screen on the boulders, she sighed. “So is the movie over? Are we done?”_

_Cordy nodded, back to business. “Mostly. What it comes down to is, like we said, Spike’s presence wasn’t sufficient to drag Angel back. One child… wasn’t enough to balance out another…”_

_/Oh./ Buffy hadn’t really thought about it that way, but she supposed the Powers had a point there. Angel really must have cared for Spike at some point like a… child. It would have been a twisted love, sure, but… With vamps, Spike was his… son, sort of. And he always did have that… what was it? That disappointed dad thing going on around Spike, didn’t he? _

_Spike for sure had the painful, ‘Yeah, I get it, I’ll never measure up’ thing around Angel, anyway. And he obviously kind of resented Connor, even if he also kind of treated him like… /Oh!/ Like a younger brother, and wow, how had she never truly, really _realized_ that… /God. Angel’s Spike’s _dad_./_

_Holy crap, that was creepy. /I’m so sorry. I never thought about it, that I’ve slept with your vamp _father_, and ugh, that must so completely drive you nuts, oh my _God_…/_

_No _wonder_ they had issues with each other when it came to her, and measuring each other against… Well, being with her, and just how messed up and creepy and wrong, and… Shudder, much?_

_“Anyway,” Cordelia went on, and now her voice had a serious dry amusement thing happening, “it all kind of went sideways. For one thing, friction. Family stuff with the vamps. For another thing, we didn’t bank on Spike and his depression. Separation from the blood-sworn and all that. It almost made him revert. Real counter-productive to his soul, that strain on a one-sided bonding; no matter how hard he fought to try to become his own man and all that good stuff. So they managed to send me back briefly to get Angel back on track. It was enough to put him onto the Circle of the Black Thorn thing. Acceptable losses from the Powers’ perspective, if he could pull it off. Fifty-fifty if he could, since either way his team was toast and they’d lose all of ‘em. They’d follow him. They were used to it, no matter how much strain there was between them. But since they were already in bondage to the Partners it was kind of moot, you know? And anyway, the plan was always that at least they’d keep Angel alive—because they knew the Partners were on the same page about that—and they could use him as a double-agent.” _

_Hazel eyes gleamed at Buffy in the diffuse Slayer-dream-light. “Remember what I said about gray-hats and needing agents in the enemy camp? That goes both ways. That’s partly why the Partners are so into him, and also why my guys have such a hardon for our boy. I mean, the Powers can’t see through him like They can with you, but he was still the best They had…” She smiled suddenly at Buffy, almost beaming. “Till you got that wild hair up your butt and came to LA for _your_ guy.”_

_Buffy didn’t like it. “That little ‘his people were already written off’ thing didn’t include Spike, right? I mean, he wasn’t there when Angel made his deal. They sent him into the breach or whatever later, right?”_

_Cordy studied her for a sec, then nodded. “Free and clear. Not sealed to the deal. He’s always gonna be yours, Buffy. Don’t worry.”_

_“Then I won’t have to mount a war against _your_ bosses too.”_

_Cordelia actually nodded acceptance of that. “You know, I think I know you well enough to know you’d try it. Which is part of the reason They’d never go that far.”_

_She turned back to the screen, as if contemplating another movie. “I think you know how most of it went down from there. As far as the Partners were concerned, there was no way Team Angel was gonna make a dent, you know? Till they did; then all the sudden the Senior Partners had to take revenge. So They trapped a whole bunch of the Powers’ champions in hell; and on top of that, took the entire city as weregild… have you heard that term?”_

_Buffy shook her head, lost._

_“Old concept. Payment for a comrade killed in battle. It would’ve worked for them too, except for a little last-minute dice-roll back in Florence. A certain Slayer took a mission in person instead of one of her girls doing it and getting dead without reporting back to anyone. Some information fell into some ears. Some messages started going around. Someone had a stroke of inspiration; a way to hedge the bets. Because once the Powers realized how things were gonna fall out and what the Partners were gonna do in revenge… You know, why not completely jump on Their chance to use you? Because all the sudden Their entire gamble-turned-victory was back to split figures.”_

_“Split figures?”_

_“Think of it this way,” Cordelia explained. “LA was the Partners’ playground. They could play craps with everyone’s soul here. If the Powers won the city with this Circle of the Black Thorn gambit and kicked them out using Angel’s crew, the Partners would lose a huge territory. So the jerks got around it by taking the whole damn place somewhere they owned outright.”_

_“Yeah. They cheated. We all figured that…”_

_“Sure. And why wouldn’t they, right? But if the entire city got dragged into a dimension ruled by the Partners, that so didn’t balance out the win in the Powers’ books. But since you were randomly coming here anyway—taking a quick turn as chaos-girl—that meant They could grab onto the chance to send a proven agent, a direct conduit with everyone into a dimension owned by the Partners. One with a radio that’s a lot more reliable than Lorne’s, you know? One that doesn’t cause headaches, or require a constant infusion of Sea Breezes to fix the migraines from interference. One they could ensure they could tap, and use to make things go their way from the inside, even if that Conduit didn’t know she was being used, because They couldn’t talk to her directly from inside without alerting the Partners to her presence...” _

_/Oh, shit./ “Right before I came to LA, my dreams went nuts. Slayer-dreams, about Spike; I swear. And then right before we came here, I felt this huge surge of energy. Like They were putting words in my mouth. When I was talking to Spike…”_

_“Because you were losing him,” Cordelia agreed. “He was slipping away from your control. And They needed you to be invested if you were going to go with them. Which meant giving you whatever you needed to keep you two yoked together; to fix the damage They caused by splitting you up. It was a big _mea culpa_ from our side, if you can believe it. This whole thing; that you’ve been this happy here? Call that incentive; maybe even a fruit basket. Because when have you ever been this happy, this at peace?”_

_Buffy scoffed grimly. “Since never.”_

_“Yeah, well. Sorry to put it like this, Buffy, but for most of your run, what’s worked is keeping you keen… have you heard that term?”_

_Buffy felt her lips take on a bitter twist. “Spike told me.”_

_“Well, then you know They that the problem with keeping a wild, captive hunter hungry is, you have to make sure that a keen bird doesn’t strike out at the person holding them to the glove, so you keep them blind. Hooded… and tied down with jesses; these little leather ropes tied to rings on their ankles…”_

_Buffy felt rage flooding her system again. She was so pissed off she could barely speak. Just a tool for everyone and everything, from Watchers to Powers and on down the line. “That’s why my whole life is full of lies and misdirections, and filled with disappointment after disappointment? Because if I ever know what’s what and get what I want I’ll, what? Retire? Quit?”_

_“Basically, yeah. But They’re willing to let you go if you do this last service…”_

_/Okay, here we go. The reason you’re telling me all this./ Buffy had been starting to wonder what was in it for the Powers, letting her in on all these background machinations. All it could really stand to do was to righteously piss her off, right? And a pissed off Slayer wasn’t likely to play ball. But if the plan was to let her know how very little control she had over her own life thus far—not to mention Spike’s, with all their little ‘nudges’—well, in that, they had hella succeeded. _

_Which meant, if They were offering a way out, even if it costed her one final job… _

_/I might be willing to pay. If you bastards won’t just renege at the last second, whenever you need me next. Or him./ “A last service. And then I’m free?”_

_“That’s the deal.” Cordy didn’t back down even a whit._

_“Even though I have most of the power in the Line.”_

_“They still have the rest. They’re willing to settle. Quantity over quality…”_

_/Oh, even better./ “Great; so I’ve ransomed myself with all my baby Slayers.”_

_“To be fair, They really didn’t foresee that whole deal. That was a chaos-mage thing. Strictly a Willow special. But They’ll totally make use of it. I mean, They know you’re not gonna pull a Faith. They’re not worried about you slipping, if you’re companioned…”_

_“Thanks?” _

_“You and Spike’ll have each other to keep you in check if you start to slide into the hands of Chaos.”_

_She had a point. _

_“And besides; between you and me, I’m betting They’re not exactly done with you yet. Lots of plans for what to do with you once you retire. It’s just, this’ll be the last time They’ll officially totally mess up your life without your consent. More just kind of… pro-bono work that you’d probably do anyway.”_

_“Oh. Great. That’s fantastic.” Buffy could hear the withering notes in her voice. “Any hints what they have in mind for us post-hell? I mean, if we ever get out of here?”_

_Cordelia just looked smug and Cordy-ish. “No. It’d mess it all up if I told you anything.”_

_Of course. “Nice to know that retirement doesn’t really mean anything to your bosses.”_

_“They didn’t make you, Buffy. Humans did that.”_

_/Oh, I am so not gonna jump on that, since I’m willing to bet the first Watchers who made Sineya got the idea with a little Powers inspiration. Speaking of nudging. You can talk all you want about us being all chaos-y, but your bosses are bastards with Their long-game battle plans and Their not giving a shit who they hurt as long as They win./_

_Cordelia sighed, sounding regretful, at least. “Think of it as a post-Slaying hobby?”_

_“Yeah. Great. Thanks.”_

_“Can you be happy knowing they finally gave you a prezzie for all your trouble? I mean, you’ve earned it, right? It’s more than They’ve ever given Angel. At least, yet.”_

_“You mean Spike.” Even though their bodies were physically near, it was weird being apart on this… what did Willow call it? An astral plane? It made her yearn for him. _

_“You were cracking. So was he. So they gave you what you wanted. Him. Gave you your Champion back. Except just for a little while here, out of your normal dimension. You had to switch places here, or, at least partly. You’ve been kind of turned off as an active Conduit here. You’ve been latent, like a Potential, and he’s been the Leader while you’ve been the Champion.” She straightened, eyes sharpening. “Still. Even as an indirect Conduit, you’re always going to do what They want you to; instinctively; warrior-style. It’s just how you roll.”_

_/Pwned, that’s me…/ _

_“You did the face-off with Gunn as the Partners’ agent. You sped up the timeline. You sent Spike to Angel, but when he didn’t kill him for screwing around with your life…”_

_/Oh, crap… The thing with the dragon…/_

_“No way _you_ were gonna kill him, obviously. But you healed him, kept him on track. You made sure Spike was about a thousand times more effective as a leader, because he wasn’t reluctant-depressive guy anymore. You kept things tight so Illyria didn’t go off-track for as long. You helped tighten up the Spikettes into a unit, like you do, and kept them loyal here at the last battle by giving them two leaders to follow and believe in, not just a guy who’s a total loner at heart. You helped Spike and his allies keep the refugees in good shape, and cleaned up all the DLs’ strongholds way ahead of schedule, so all the Partners’ champions had about zero snackies for the Partners’ soul-count.”_

_Well, when she put it that way, at least it sounded… helpful. She really couldn’t complain, could she, as long as she was being used for good things? Anyway, it had all felt like free will, here, without the dreams. Without even her inner demony-ness pushing her on. For the first time since she could remember, all her choices had felt like just… Buffy. Just acting on her conscience. It had been… refreshing, like getting to know herself all over again as a woman rather than just a Slayer. _

_/I think I know who I am again, now. As an adult. For the first time since I was Called… I know _me_./ _

_“And tonight, you completely intervened in the struggle between the Partners and the Powers over Angel’s fate. In a way, you and Gunn kind of switched places a little in that one. And you’ve let me all the way in. Totally cracking the Partners’ hold over their own dimension right now, for the record, having a Powers-rep sitting pretty in the middle of their fancy dive. Though, gotta say, it really hurts me. My 'skin' is burning like woah. If I wasn’t all over you I’d’ve shriveled up like a prune by now, so thanks.”_

_That… had totally been her own personal choice. And she definitely did not regret it. “Angel… needed you. And I guess I’m glad to know… all this. So, you know…”_

_“I’m okay if you don’t thank me back, Buffy. I’m not exactly gonna be all hurt-girl about it, you know? We both bought today with pain. But what we come out with is…” She lifted her brows. “We know what’s up. You have your guy, I have mine, and now we both know how it all went down. Thank you…” A little light sharpened in her eyes. “…For getting him started down the road for me.”_

_Buffy sighed and briefly gave in. “I guess thank you for… keeping him on it. And for letting me know. That Spike was always meant for me.” It was actually really, really good to know that. That, yes; they’d built what they had built on their own, with hard work and blood spilt and exchanged and a lot of sweat and tears, but… There was something to knowing that the Powers had set an infatuated Spike on his path to her, via Dru. That They had sanctioned the relationship as special and important; as much so as the abortive ‘destiny’ with Angel had ever been, and that it wasn’t some kind of… default. “I guess… you probably wanna get back, huh?”_

_“If you don’t mind. I’m pretty much out of time.”_

_“Okay. I’m good. But… I appreciate the 411.” Buffy let out a slow breath, forced the words out. “And, you know, in case I don’t see you again?” She needed to acknowledge the debt… and the kinship. “You’ve really rocked it.”_

_“I know.” A confident grin, one of the most Cordelia things in the universe. “But thanks for saying it.”_

_Okay, wow. People really liked throwing her words in her face with that. Which reminded her of the ‘you don’t get to be happy’ clause from earlier, and, moments separation giving her a little objectivity, something occurred to Buffy belatedly. “I’m sorry you and Angel didn’t get… to be happy either.”_

_“Don’t worry. That story isn’t over either.”_

_“Oh. Uh… good?”_

_Cordy set her shoulders. “Time to close the curtain. For now, anyway. You ready?”_

_/Close the… Oh. Damn./ Just the thought was enough to tear things inside her. Break over. Time to go… watch Angel die. “I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”_

_“You and me both, sister. But he’s earned it. From both of us.”_

_The familiar desert vanished. _

On her lap, as she came back to the frozen moment they’d left. Time resumed its normal course, resolved back into the now in which Angel still struggled. His bloodied lips moved, ever, like he was still trying to communicate something. And once in a while his body arched up. It was a struggling, sickening parody of sex; but this, more a desperate search for oxygen. And his legs kicked, his heels beating a tattoo on the floor. 

It wouldn’t be long now. 

Cordelia’s light was flickering. The overworked demon inside of Buffy’s being was seriously exhausted. It was really not used to being held separate and distinct like this. It felt unnatural and weird and… She was losing her hold on it. 

It was time.

Anyway, she recognized what Angel was saying. It took the endless repetition of it before she caught it. “Please,” he was saying. “Miss you… so much, Cordy… Wish you… could touch me…”

With a sigh, Buffy pulled back a little more, certainty filling her. “Go ahead.”

The voice was a barest whisper now; almost as low as Angel’s. “You sure? It seems kinda rude.”

She couldn’t shrug her shoulders anymore. She had abdicated control for a second. “He won’t know the difference. Not right now.” Especially after all that Cordelia had just shown her, she could do this much for them both. God knew she hoped someone could do it for her and Spike, if it ever came to that. “Go ahead,” she repeated.

A short silence, then, “Thank you.” And then the glowy presence had her hand, was lifting it, stretching it out. And when the hand landed, she didn’t feel it. Not that she didn’t know what Angel’s hair felt like, his cheek. She knew those things well enough, still, to imagine, since he was familiar as body memory. But she didn’t try. This wasn’t her moment, and she didn’t want it. 

“Cordy…” Angel’s hiss was the barest exhalation. 

And that was it. Cordy had left the building. 

The glow cut off. Buffy’s demonside sank, exhausted by such long-term overuse as a separate entity. Angel blinked, clearly floored by the sudden desertion. And Buffy could feel him again; feel his hair under her hand. She sighed. He was so cold; cold as if he were a vampire again. 

So she petted his hair. And finally, completely, let him go. “She’s waiting for you, Angel,” she whispered, and stroked. “You can let go. Go to her. Once you get out of here, she’ll be on the other side…”

“Never get…” It was the barest whisper, but she knew. Because it was Angel. 

“Yes, you will,” she informed him staunchly. “Because you've done enough. Your soul's clean. And it’s your soul that loves her." Something occurred belatedly to Buffy, and she shrugged, aware now of exactly what Cordelia Chase had been. "Heck; maybe your demon does too, knowing how feisty she is. So go on. She’s waiting.” Why it wouldn’t ‘last’ was beyond her, but he deserved to believe it right now anyway.

Angel went still then. Breathing, but his lips stopped moving. And the countdown started. A long, endless reeling down of interminable minutes as the breaths got shorter, the spaces between them longer, and the scrabbling for life slowly became weakened twitches…

It was the longest night of her life… and Buffy had lived through some really unbearably long nights. But thank god, by then, the last of the struggles had ended at the doors, and Spike came back to her side. Squatted next to her, eyes on the man who’d raised him, in the dark. Sharing the vigil.

When the last breath came, rattled out, he was there, his shoulder touching hers. 

There was a stunned silence that was more than dimensional night. Everything went still in the entirety of, it seemed, the universe. 

And then, everything started to roar. And whirl. Buffy felt like she was being sucked backward through a tube… A loud, screeching bedlam of noise filled her ears, and she thought she heard things that sounded incredibly familiar, felt things… Screaming children, clashing steel, the feel of a bite, passion, pain…

And then she was standing outside, in the pouring rain, in a darkness much less profound. The overwhelming smell of blood was gone...  
  
And there were stars in the sky.

_Stars_. They peeped incredibly faintly through the faint, reflected glow of neon lights against a huge cloud cover, but…

Wait. _Lights?_

Everything felt wrong, disorienting, and her head was whirling, but…

She had her axe in her hand, and she was wearing something tight and incredibly wet...  
  
Wet?  
  
The dampness felt alien, like another world, something she couldn't place, and...

And then something swept toward her, tried to take off her head. She reacted automatically, raising the axe in self-defense. At which point she registered really belatedly by smells and the clashing sounds and blood and goo and all the rest that… /I’m in a battle?/

Spike was already whirling beside her. His back hit hers briefly, aligning; in motion and swinging. He was using bruising, crushing strokes. No sword. A… A mace? 

He twisted back to her left side, automatic as breathing. His right hand fell to hers; a quick, tight clasp, to assess her condition. “Alright, pet?” 

/My Champion. My mate./ And the sleeping demon inside her came roaring back to wakefulness. 

God, she wanted this fight. She wanted to punch something. She wanted to leap on Spike, wrap her legs around him, to kiss him, and what was _happening?_ Why was it raining? It _never_ rained here! God, her skin felt like it was _drinking_ it in, and where _were_ they? They were outside, in the middle of a battle…

And was that _Illyria_ over there, wrecking heads right and left? 

Illyria in her _human_ body?

Well, if so, she was still supremely pissed off. There wouldn’t be anyone left to fight soon, if she had her way. 

Buffy swung automatically, ducking a blow. Felt Spike take care of whatever faceless thing had come after her. Returned the favor a second later when something came at him across her. /Where the hell _are_ we? What’s going _on?_/

God, it was dark. If they could just have a little more light on the subject…

Though…

She found herself mesmerized again by the distant streetlamps. So much so that she damn near got her head cut off, because she wasn’t paying attention. 

And then the darkness was split by flame.

A massive gout of fire roared down the alley where they stood. And all the sudden, their combatants were shrieking. Fleeing. 

_“Cordelia!”_

Buffy froze, beyond stunned. /That was Angel’s voice./

There was no one left to fight. That massive gout of flame had chased off whatever dregs of enemy combatants remained. They scattered to the far corners of the rainy night like a bad dream, because the most dangerous of their number was no longer on their side.  
  
The dragon was here—how was the dragon here? It was dead!—and Angel was alive? And Illyria was back in her mortal form, and…

Buffy turned to Spike, completely thrown... and saw that he was wearing something different than he had been earlier. Black tee and jeans instead of a dark blue button-down and a motorcycle jacket; and not nearly so torn-up, and just, what?

“I guess Peaches was right after all. The bloody thing worked.”

“What?”

Spike lifted his chin. “Look where we are, Love.” 

She stared around her. An alley, yeah; she got that. A super wet one. It looked vaguely familiar. Trash, down there. Chain link. A couple of doorways. A dumpster. Lights at the far end. (Lights!) And Illyria! In her Fred-body! (Seriously; just, what?)

Then she caught sight of Angel. Angel, just standing there. All… _alive_. Alive, and staring at her. And… Was that Charles Gunn, cradled in his arms, holding a bleeding belly? He was supposed to be dust!

“I know what you did,” Angel called softly, from the fifteen or so feet that separated them. “Thank you.”

/Not in heaven, then. Not even some limbo where he could visit Cordy once a week. Bastards./ “I…” She turned back to Spike as realization trickled in. “We’re back?”

Spike looked around them, and his nostrils flared. “Smells like LA to me. The not-so-hellish one.”

“Because he _died?”_

Amused blue eyes turned back to hers, twinkling in the incredible light of _streetlamps_. “Sods really have a hardon for Peaches.”

“Oh my _God!” _Her fingers clutched Spike’s wrist, unsure that anything was real right now. Like, yeah, her inner demonside was sure. It was awake, full-bore, and looking around for something to kill, stat. _It_ knew. But… “We’re all… back? Like, everyone’s _alive_ again? How does that even make _sense?”_

Spike’s nostrils flared again, and he nodded toward Gunn. “Judging from the way Charlie-boy smells, looks like they wound back the bloody clock.”

/Wound back…/ “Wait. To the night we _left?”_

Something about that really seemed to be bothering Spike, and okay. Something about it was really starting to make Buffy feel jittery, off, but maybe it was just the shock. Her other side was all over the place. Probably that had a lot to do with it. “Seems that way, pet. All dressed up and no one to fight.” He tilted his head at her. “Guess we won this round?”

He was eyeing her strangely as he said it. Like he was waiting for something. /I think… we won a lot of things./ She stepped closer to him. “Yeah. I guess so.” She looked around her briefly, still having a hard time connecting to reality. “Wow.”

His free hand came up, rubbed her arm briskly, and his eyes darted around them through the curls dripping into his eyes. “Well,” he muttered, “we're back on the other side of the looking glass, yeah?” And his eyes found hers, a strange, sardonic light filling their blue depths. “Time to start figuring out how to write up the storybook.”

/What?/

/Oh. He wants to know if we’ll… If anything will change, now we’re…/

/Oh, you idiot./ She turned to him, uncertain why everything felt so weird, so off… but sure of one thing. She had him and he had her. And that was all that mattered. “It’s not a story, Spike. It’s living. And I think we’ve got the hang of it pretty well.” Caught his hand in hers. “Hell is the heaven you make it, right?” 

His eyes sought hers. And steadied. “Yeah. Guess we’ll do, then.”

“Yeah. We’ll do.” And she kissed him.

**FIN  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Aaaaand, we're back!   
  
Just in time to deal with the Scourge, on their way up to Scotland and loaded for bear (or Slayer(s)), a bunch of infant slayerettes in trouble, the tattered remnants of the Scoobies unaware that their previously-a-wreck Buffy's all but married at this point. We have Giant Dawn to deal with, Giles to... well, probably just tell him to shut up, at this point, considering his POV of late... and a lot of decisions to be made.  
  
Join me if you will, on another leg of the journey, with "Home Is Where the Scourge Is"   
(same posting schedule).   
  
Thank you all very much again!!!   
**


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